With 1993's Paid Vacation, Richard Marx's career was steered from more rock-leaning territory to the softer and friendlier landscape of adult contemporary, and the resulting album was much warmer and organic than his previous releases, most notably 1991's dark and brooding Rush Street . Paid Vacation's lead single, the acoustic ballad "Now and Forever," became a massive pop and adult contemporary hit in a time when popular music had changed from the corporate rock of the '80s to the angst-ridden grunge and rap of the '90s. Paid Vacation also produced a Top 20 hit with the light-hearted soul nugget "The Way She Loves Me," which also proved to be Marx's last American Top 40 hit of the decade.