Lionel Richie
The songwriter who turned a funk band into a ballad machine and then did the same thing to American pop. Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on June 20, 1949 and grew up on the campus of the Tuskegee Institute, where his family had worked for two generations. He met Thomas McClary in a registration line there in 1967, and by 1968 they had a band. The Commodores signed to Motown in November 1972 on the strength of hard funk, and it was Richie's writing that redirected them — Easy, Three Times a Lady, Sail On, Still. He left the group in 1982.
What followed was one of the most commercially dominant runs in pop history. Can't Slow Down was certified Diamond, spent fifty-nine consecutive weeks inside the Billboard Top 10, and took Album of the Year at the 1985 Grammy Awards. He placed five singles at No. 1 on the Hot 100, wrote Lady for Kenny Rogers and Endless Love with Diana Ross, and co-wrote We Are the World with Michael Jackson, which won Song of the Year. Say You, Say Me took both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. He is one of only two songwriters ever to place No. 1 records in nine consecutive years. Tuskegee, his 2012 album of country re-recordings, returned him to the top of the chart thirty years after he started. He has sold more than 100 million records, received the Songwriters Hall of Fame's Johnny Mercer Award in 2016 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
Articles on Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie – Dancing On The Ceiling
The trick was thirty-five years old. Motown paid more than anyone had ever paid for a music video, and hired the man who invented it.
Lionel Richie – Hello
The Joke That Became A Greeting His Wife Saved From Obscurity
Lionel Richie – Say You, Say Me
Won The Oscar But Couldn't Appear On The Soundtrack Album
Kenny Rogers – Lady
Lionel Richie's own band turned this song down. They thought it was too slow.
Commodores – Easy
Lionel Richie was writing a country song. It came out on a Motown record, with a rock guitar solo in the middle of it.
Lionel Richie – All Night Long (All Night)
The Caribbean chant that millions have sung along to for forty years — "Tom bo li de say de moi ya" — means absolutely nothing, and Lionel Richie made it up that way on purpose.