About The Song
“Crazy” is a 1980s country-pop ballad recorded by Kenny Rogers and released as a single in 1984. The song appears on his album What About Me?, issued that year on RCA/Liberty during the height of his crossover success. Co-written by Rogers with a then-young songwriter named Richard Marx, it runs a little under four minutes and was released as one of the key singles from the album after the title track. The record belongs to the same phase of Rogers’ career that produced major hits like “Love Will Turn You Around” and “We’ve Got Tonight,” where his music was aimed at both country and adult-contemporary radio.
What About Me? arrived at a transitional point. Rogers had just come off the Bee Gees–guided project Eyes That See in the Dark and the worldwide success of “Islands in the Stream.” For the new album he turned to a mix of writers and producers, blending Nashville and Los Angeles influences. Richard Marx, who would later become a hitmaker in his own right, supplied several songs and co-writes, with “Crazy” the most successful of them. For Marx, getting a cut and a hit with Rogers was an important early break; for Rogers, it gave him a contemporary-sounding ballad that still fit his established image.
The track was recorded with top studio players in a polished early-’80s style. Electric piano, sustained keyboards and smooth electric guitar lines provide the backdrop, supported by a steady drum pattern and rounded bass. The tempo is medium-slow, and the arrangement is built to leave space around Rogers’ voice, bringing the chorus hook forward without heavy instrumental breaks. Strings or synth pads appear mainly in the choruses, underlining key lines without turning the record into a full orchestral production. The overall sound sits between soft rock and modern country, matching the adult-contemporary direction of much of his work from this period.
The words follow a narrator who is fully aware that his behaviour looks irrational from the outside. He admits that he keeps thinking about a relationship, replaying conversations and ignoring friends’ advice that he should move on. At the same time, he insists that what he feels is more than simple infatuation; losing this person would mean losing the one thing that makes sense to him. The repeated use of the word “crazy” reflects how his feelings appear to others and how overwhelming they are from the inside. There is no complex storyline; most of the lyric is built from simple, conversational phrases about late-night thoughts, doubts and the pull of someone he cannot forget.
On U.S. country radio, “Crazy” became one of Rogers’ bigger mid-1980s singles. Contemporary chart summaries show it reaching the top of the country listings and climbing high on adult-contemporary playlists, with a solid showing on the Billboard Hot 100 as well. Its performance helped extend the life of What About Me? after the title track had run its course and confirmed that Rogers could still place ballads near the top of several formats at a time when country and pop sounds were changing quickly. In Canada and other markets, it likewise registered as a notable crossover hit.
Critical reaction at the time treated the song as a characteristic Kenny Rogers single: an accessible, radio-ready ballad built around his relaxed, slightly rough voice and a clean, mid-tempo groove. Later retrospectives often highlight it for two reasons. For Rogers, it is cited as one of the last big romantic ballads of his peak crossover run before the mid-1980s shift in country production styles. For Richard Marx, it is remembered as one of the first major cuts that led to his own solo career. Because of that, “Crazy” tends to appear not only on Kenny Rogers best-of collections and love-song anthologies, but also in discussions of songwriters who moved from behind the scenes to the front of the stage.
Today, the track continues to show up on compilations that focus on Rogers’ 1980s material, usually alongside songs like “All My Life,” “A Love Song,” “Love Will Turn You Around” and “Lady.” Its blend of simple, direct language, a memorable chorus and crossover production makes it a representative example of the sound that kept him on both country and adult-contemporary radio well into the middle of the decade, and it provides an early glimpse of Richard Marx’s melodic style before he began releasing records under his own name.
Video
Lyric
Girl, there are no words to say
What I feel in my heart
You, you’re on my mind night and day
And it hurts me when we’re apart
When you’re not here by my side
There is nothing in this world for meI guess I’m crazy, crazy for you, can’t you see?
And although you may think it’s crazy
Here is where I want to be
I will always need your loveWell now, I can see every dream
When I look in your eyes
And though, things never are what they seem
There is one thing that I realize
That there’s no doubt in my mind
We can make this love go on foreverI guess I’m crazy, crazy for you, can’t you see?
And although you may think I’m crazy
Here is where I’ll always be
And I need you with me‘Cause you are the dream
That finally came true for me
And all my life there’ll be no one else
If I looked all my life, there could be no one else
And for the rest of my life all I need is you