‘I wanted to quit’: The Voice’s Richard Marx’s shock confession

Richard Marx has something he wants to get off his chest. The singer-songwriter admits he was overwhelmed when he joined The Voice last year.

“I’ll be honest with you, at the end of the first week, I really wanted to quit because the schedule was insane,” Richard, 62, tells TV WEEK. “At the end of five days, I remember coming home to this house I was renting with [wife] Daisy [Fuentes] and I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’”

What freaked the ‘Hazard’ singer out? While he was no stranger to performing on television, the long hours on set wore him down.

“I’m a pretty impatient guy, so being on tour is so good for me because it’s just constantly moving on to the next gig, right?” he explains. “But sitting on a set all day and not seeing the sunlight got to me.”

His wife, Daisy, who was previously a host of La Voz Kids, the Spanish-language version of The Voice Kids, for US network Telemundo, urged Richard to give the show another day or two before deciding to leave.

“She told me, ‘The first week is brutal, but it gets easier,’” Richard says. “She kind of talked me off the ledge and, from week two, I just loved it.

“So, this year [when filming began], instead of being like, ‘What the f–k is happening?’, I knew exactly what to expect. I thought, ‘I don’t like this part, but it’ll be over in four days.’”

Richard is now right at home on his second season of The Voice alongside fellow coaches Ronan Keating, Melanie C and Kate Miller-Heidke.

Anyone who has been watching will know the show has introduced a ‘name-drop jar’ for Richard, as he tends to talk about the celebrities he’s worked with.

“Is it my fault I work with a bunch of famous people and I like to mention it?” he says. “They started the name-drop jar, which I thought was hilarious and I’m like, ‘I’ll fill that f–ker up.’ We’re on the second jar.

“And by the way, Ronan has just as many names to drop. He had George Michael as his celebrity partner on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, so he’s one to talk.”

Richard, whose 1989 single ‘Right Here Waiting’ hit No. 1 in Australia and the US, says he has a gift for “manifesting people” that he wants to work with into his path. He recalls being a huge fan of Aussie legend John Farnham after the latter released the album Whispering Jack in 1986.

“I came over here in ’88 and I’m playing my first ever show in Melbourne and he showed up,” Richard says. “We became pals, and we wrote songs and performed together. We’re still friends.”

Another case in point: three years ago, Richard was in Australia and mentioned during interviews how he would love to work with one of his heroes, Rod Stewart. Then, he bumped into him in a Perth restaurant and they went drinking together the next night. Fast-forward to 2026 and Rod has duetted with Richard on the latter’s latest album, After Hours.

“My wife says, ‘You put out this loving energy towards people that you really admire and I think it attracts them to you somehow,’” Richard says.

With the pressure on the hopeful singers on The Voice, Richard has a word of advice for those who are underperforming.

“If you’re saying, ‘Nerves got the better of me,’ then you’re in the wrong industry,” he says. “You’re supposed to be nervous. You think I’m not nervous when I get up to sing? But that’s fuel.

“Bruno Mars is not apologising for a performance because he was nervous. He was nervous, trust me, but he crushed it.”

The Voice airs Monday, 7.30pm and Sunday, 7pm on Channel Seven and 7Plus.