The music business is tough to crack. Whether you’re a singer, songwriter or musician, success takes some combination of talent, hard work and luck.

Richard Marx, who returns to Hawaii on Sunday for his first concerts in the islands in 27 years, knows this well. Heck, he knew it early enough to make it one of the themes of his debut single: 1987’s “Don’t Mean Nothing,” which made him an overnight sensation … six years after he moved to Los Angeles from Illinois, straight out of high school.

Marx had more than most when he arrived in California. For one, he had good genes and some incredible experience for a teen. His mother was a singer, and his father was a musician who had started a commercial jingle company. Marx’s father had him singing commercial jingles from age 7 (including ditties for Ken-L Ration dog food and Nestle Crunch). That experience in recording studios would prove invaluable down the road.

“I knew mic technique, I knew how to use headphones,” Marx said in a recent phone conversation from Las Vegas, where he was finishing up a two-week stand at the Flamingo. “I’m really comfortable in that room (the studio). … That certainly helped me with launching into the record business.”

It also gave him the chance to make a demo tape, and when it landed in the hands of Lionel Richie, he had the “in” he needed to move out west.

“The fact that he wanted me to be a part of what he was doing — he was leaving the Commodores and doing his first solo record,” Marx said. “So it was an opportunity to be a part of something like that, to learn, because even though I grew up with an incredibly talented father and mother … it was a different world than making records.”

Richie recommended Marx to country star Kenny Rogers, and Marx ran with the opportunity, co-writing three songs on the platinum album “What About Me?” Those included the top-20 title track and “Crazy,” a No. 1 country hit.

Marx’s resume continued to grow as he lent his easy tenor to records for more big names — Madonna, Whitney Houston, Chicago, George Benson, Julio Iglesias — getting enough work to make a good living, but also getting more studio experience as he waited for a record label to sign him.

“Through that I was also producing demos, learning to be a producer, writing with different people,” Marx said.

That dues-paying delayed Marx’s fame but would come in handy later in his career.

Marx eventually got his record deal — from veteran music executive Bruce Lundvall at Manhattan Records, who heard something in the same songs so many other labels had turned down — and once he got that chance, he got off to an unprecedented start.

Beginning with the straightforward rocker “Don’t Mean Nothing,” Marx’s first seven singles across two multiplatinum albums all reached the top five, a record at the time for any artist (and still a record for a male solo artist). Among those hits were three straight chart-toppers: “Hold On to the Nights,” “Satisfied” and “Right Here Waiting.”

The last of those three has probably become his signature song, a staple of throwback radio and one of the more covered songs of the ’80s (Monica, Donny Osmond and Barry Manilow are among those who’ve submitted versions). But the song he says he hears about most from fans is the moody “Hazard” from the 1991 album “Rush Street,” which came with a whodunit video.

“I love that song,” Marx said, “but I really love how many people love that song. I probably have more people make a point to tell me they love ‘Hazard’ than any other song I’ve written.”

Which circles back to all that time learning how to produce records and collaborate with others writing songs.

No singer maintains their peak level of fame forever, and when the spotlight shifts, few are prepared to remain relevant. Marx’s gift with melody has kept him busy as a songwriter and producer.

One of his better known efforts is “This I Promise You,” by ’N Sync, which took the boy band to the top of the adult contemporary chart. He has also written or produced songs across genres for everyone from Toni Braxton to Keith Urban to Josh Groban to Vertical Horizon.

Nearest and dearest to Marx, though, is 2003’s “Dance With My Father,” the Grammy Song of the Year winner he wrote with the late, legendary R&B singer Luther Vandross, who Marx said was one of his closest friends.

The two met backstage at the American Music Awards in 1990. They expressed mutual admiration, and their friendship grew with phone calls while they were both bored on the road.

“You know, 2 o’clock in the morning,” Marx said. “He’d go, ‘How’s your (hotel) room look?’”

Once done with their respective tours, Marx had Vandross over for dinner with his family, and Vandross offered to provide some backing vocals on Marx’s next album. The result was “Keep Coming Back,” Marx’s most soulful single yet.

Marx would return the favor, first by co-writing Vandross’ Christmas single, “Every Year, Every Christmas,” then by collaborating on “Dance With My Father,” a tribute to Vandross’ late father that Vandross would call “the most important song of my career.”

“He was so excited about that song,” Marx said. “He said, ‘This is my signature song.’ Ten days later he had a stroke. It was … so heartbreaking and unfair.”

Vandross would never record again. He died two years later.

“For my money, he probably was the finest singer of my lifetime,” Marx said. “I put Maurice White from Earth Wind & Fire way up there as well, but Luther could do things that no one else could do.”

“To have that voice silenced was bad enough, but I lost my friend. It was a really tough time. It was a really big loss, and I still miss him,” Marx said.

“That’s why I do ‘Dance With My Father’ in my show now, because I want to keep talking to him, I want people to always remember him and honor him.”

Marx is looking forward to coming back to Hawaii. He’s vacationed here in the 27 years since his last show at the Waikiki Shell, but he’d never been asked to return to perform. He and his wife, former MTV VJ and “America’s Funniest Home Videos” host Daisy Fuentes, are avid hikers and have planned some extra time in the islands to get their fix of Hawaii’s beautiful outdoors.

“The last thing we want to do in Hawaii is be hanging around inside and ordering room service,” Marx said. “We wanna be out. We wanna see everything.”

The pair of stalwarts from the MTV era — who’ve chuckled over an old clip of her introducing “Hazard” on the network’s international version — have been married for almost two years, but the way Marx goes on about Fuentes, one would think this trip is their honeymoon.

“She’s just one of the most beautiful women who’ve ever lived,” Marx said, “but it’s so not about that. She is the smartest, funniest, coolest, most curious, most adventurous, most interesting person I’ve ever met. If you can be married to someone you feel that way about … I feel like truly the luckiest guy in the world.”