Richard Marx’s Christmas Spirit

If there was ever an artist who it seems like should have made a Christmas album a long time ago, I’d think Richard Marx might be it — light rock star, clean-cut good looks, ability to do sugary vocals … and being from a Christmas-y kind of town like Chicago doesn’t hurt either.  Yet, it took until his 25th anniversary of hitting the charts for Marx to cut such a disc, as Christmas Spirit came out this fall (though he did release an EP with five of the album’s tunes a year ago).

Various tracks off the CD have been receiving holiday play this winter, and his version of “Little Drummer Boy,” which was intentionally written to have a U2 kind of sound, put him back into the Top 10 of Billboard‘s Adult Contemporary chart for the first time in 14 years.  In this interview with WGN-TV in Chicago, Richard explains how the album came about and discusses some of the story of its recording.