Lionel Richie (born 1949 in Tuskegee, Alabama) first came into prominence in the '70s as a member of the hugely successful funk and soul band The Commodores. Richie’s star shone increasingly brighter as the band moved away from their funky origins and towards soulful ballads such as Easy, Three Times A Lady and Still.
In the wake of the enormous success of his Oscar-winning 1981 duet with Diana Ross, Endless Love, Richie left the band and struck out on his own as a solo performer. His 1982 self-titled debut album was an immediate smash hit, selling over four million copies and peaking at No.3 in the US album charts.
However, even that paled in comparison to his follow-up, Can’t Slow Down. Released in 1983, it went on to sell over 10 million copies and win the 1984 Grammy for Album of the year, helped along by the timeless hit singles Hello and All Night Long (All Night). Richie rounded off an incredible year by performing at the closing ceremony for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
If 1984 saw Richie become a global superstar, 1985 was the year he cemented that position. He co-wrote the charity single We Are The World with Michael Jackson and scored another No.1 single with Say You, Say Me. He was back at the top of the charts again the following year with another smash hit Dancing On The Ceiling, taken from the album of the same name.
Richie backed away from the limelight for five years after Dancing On The Ceiling to look after his gravely ill father. He didn’t release any new music until the compilation album Back To Front in 1992, which added three new songs to a collection of Richie’s hits both as a solo artist and with The Commodores. One of the new songs, Do It To Me, topped the US R&B charts, marking Richie’s first hit in five years.
Richie returned after a four-year absence with his fourth solo album Louder Than Words in 1996 and rounded out the 20th century with his fifth Time in 1998.
The ’00s saw Richie flying high once more with Renaissance, which went platinum in the UK and started a run of five albums that all landed in the UK Top 20. In 2012, Richie had his first US No.1 album since Dancing On The Ceiling with Tuskegee, a reinterpreted collection of his hits recorded alongside a host of guest stars including Willie Nelson, Shania Twain and Darius Rucker.
Following a coveted Sunday afternoon set at Glastonbury in 2015, Richie decamped to Vegas for a residency at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino's Zappos Theater. He became a judge on American Idol in 2017 and released a live album, Hello From Vegas, in 2019.
In 2022, Richie was both inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and received the 2022 American Music Awards Icon Award, his 18th AMA award. He also received the 2022 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress. He also debuted and served as producer on the documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. The film quickly became a cultural phenomenon as the most watched music documentary of 2024 with a staggering 1.3 billion minutes viewed.
