Lionel Richie

There are artists who give the world their pain. There are others, rarer, who give it their tenderness.

Lionel Richie belongs to the second kind. His songs are the soundtrack to the most intimate moments of millions of lives: the first dance at a wedding, the slow song at a party, the heartbreak at four in the morning, the "I love you" you could not find your own words for.

In a collection full of tormented geniuses, he is, quite simply, the warmth.

The one with the saxophone

He was born in 1949 in Tuskegee, a small town in Alabama, in a house full of music: his grandmother taught classical piano and outside there was country playing everywhere.

While he was a university student he joined a band as singer and saxophonist. The Commodores signed to Motown, the label of Black music par excellence, and started out opening concerts for the Jackson 5.

They began as pure party funk, with numbers like "Brick House". But little by little Lionel's real talent began to show, and it was not rhythm but the ballad: he wrote "Easy", "Three Times a Lady", "Still".

The lad with the saxophone turned out to be one of the finest romantic songwriters of his generation.

Nine years running

His gift for the love song was so great that he began to share it around. He wrote "Lady" for Kenny Rogers, which went to number one, and recorded "Endless Love" as a duet with Diana Ross, one of the best-selling singles in history.

In 1982 he launched himself as a solo artist and that is when it all exploded: "Truly", "All Night Long", "Hello", "Say You, Say Me" — the last of these won him an Oscar. His record "Can't Slow Down", from 1983, sold more than twenty million copies and won the Grammy for album of the year.

And there is a record of his that is hard to believe. Between 1978 and 1986, Lionel Richie wrote a number one song every year, nine years running. The only other songwriter who had managed it was called Irving Berlin.

The song that was not for him

In 1985 he sat down with Michael Jackson to write "We Are the World": the charity anthem against hunger that brought together the biggest stars in music and sold more than twenty million copies to help Africa.

Two of the finest songwriters of their time writing a song whose only purpose was to do good. That too was his hallmark: generosity.

He came, moreover, from the same house as Stevie Wonder: Motown taught them both that a popular song could be, at one and the same time, a perfect product and a decent gesture.

The second life

The lovely thing about his story is that it did not end with the eighties.

In 2012 he re-recorded his hits as duets with country stars, on a record that went to number one again. In 2015 he played Glastonbury to more than a hundred thousand people, in a show the BBC called triumphant. And since 2018 he has been a judge on American Idol, where an entire generation not yet born when "Hello" was on the radio discovered him as what he is: a warm, funny, generous man.

From that chair, in February 2026, it fell to him to announce on television the new members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Oasis among them. The grandfather of pop reading out the names of the brothers who spent thirty years fighting.

Few artists grow old more loved than they were at their peak. Lionel is one of them.

What he gave us

Lionel Richie is alive, still singing and still smiling. His story is not one of darkness or of decline: it is one of craft, of joy and of a tenderness that never ran out on him.

If you put on "Easy", "Three Times a Lady", "Hello" or "All Night Long", you will hear a man from a small town in Alabama who made the whole world feel loved.

Some of the greats gave us their wound. Lionel gave us, for half a century, our tenderness. And he is still handing it out.

Sources

Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (Tuskegee, Alabama, 20 June 1949), singer, songwriter and producer. He joined the Commodores as singer and saxophonist; the group signed to Motown in 1971 and became one of the label's most successful acts. With them he wrote ballads such as "Easy", "Sail On", "Three Times a Lady" — the group's first number one — and "Still". He wrote "Lady" for Kenny Rogers (1980) and recorded "Endless Love" as a duet with Diana Ross (1981), one of the best-selling singles in history. As a solo artist, from 1982 onwards, he strung together a long run of hits; his album "Can't Slow Down" (1983) won the Grammy for album of the year and passed 20 million copies, with "All Night Long" and "Hello"; "Say You, Say Me", from the film "White Nights", won him the Oscar for best original song in 1986. Between 1978 and 1986 he wrote a number one song every year, nine consecutive years: according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, only Irving Berlin had achieved anything comparable. He co-wrote "We Are the World" (1985) with Michael Jackson. He has sold more than 100 million records. He released "Tuskegee" (2012), an album of duets with country stars that reached number one, performed at Glastonbury in 2015 and has been a judge on American Idol since 2018; on that programme he announced, alongside Ryan Seacrest, the 2026 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, of which Oasis are part. He was himself inducted into that hall in 2022. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from AllMusic, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Wikipedia, Variety and other press coverage.