Deep Album Cuts Vol. 254: Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside A Tribe Called Quest, Beck, Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, Devo, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, New York Dolls, Rage Against The Machine, and Dionne Warwick, among others. I don't think he has the best chance of getting in, but I'd like to see it -- for a few years he was one of those artists that crossed over from R&B and became one of pop's biggest stars, alongside people that are already in the hall like Michael and Whitney, and he did it more with pure songwriting talent than the showmanship of his contemporaries.
Lionel Richie deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Dreaming Of You with Diana Ross
2. Tell Me
3. Wandering Stranger
4. Serves You Right
5. Just Put Some Love In Your Heart
6. Round And Round
7. You Mean More To Me
8. Can't Slow Down
9. Love Will Find A Way
10. The Only One
11. Don't Stop
12. Tonight Will Be Alright
13. Night Train (Smooth Alligator)
14. I Wanna Take You Down
15. (That's) The Way I Feel
16. How Long
17. Road To Heaven
Track 1 from Endless Love (Soundtrack) (1981)
Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 from Lionel Richie (1982)
Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from Can't Slow Down (1983)
Tracks 11, 12 and 13 from Dancing On The Ceiling (1986)
Track 14 from Louder Than Words (1996)
Track 15 from Time (1998)
Track 16 from Renaissance (2000)
Track 17 from Just For You (2004)
Lionel Richie recorded 9 albums with The Commodores before launching his solo career -- I think they have a distinct enough legacy, including some successful post-Richie records, that I'm leaving them to be a separate playlist I'll do later on at some point. His first release as a solo artist was the Diana Ross duet "Endless Love" from the film of the same name. And the Endless Love soundtrack also featured one more Richie/Ross collaboration, "Dreaming of You," that shockingly was never even released as a single after "Endless Love" topped the Hot 100 for nine weeks.
Lionel Richie only released three solo albums in the '80s that constitute his reign as an A-list pop star -- then he took 10 years between albums, and returned as a comfortable legacy act who never seemed too bothered with trying to return to the top of the charts. And I included pretty much all his '80s deep cuts, because there aren't that many of them -- 3 of the 9 songs on Lionel Richie were hits, 5 of the 8 songs on Can't Slow Down were hits, and 6 of the 8 songs on Dancing On The Ceiling were hits. The CD and cassette editions of Dancing also had a 9th track, "Night Train (Smooth Alligator)," which is about as ridiculous as its title.
There's a lot of talent on those records. "Wandering Stranger" alone includes guitars by Joe Walsh and Little Feat's Fred Tackett, backing vocals by Richard Marx, and prolific session guys Clarence McDonals, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, and Joe Chemay. Sheila E. plays percussion on "Don't Stop," which is one of the few Lionel Richie tracks that feels like an attempt at some sleek modern Prince/MJ sort of groove. His '80s deep cuts almost all sound like they could've been hits, and are less heavy on ballads than the singles, "Serves You Right" and "Love Will Find A Way" are really good groove-driven songs. And the 84-second "Just Put Some Love In Your Life" is incredibly schmaltzy but works well as a brief miniature piece. Can't Slow Down famously won the Grammy for Album of the Year in an incredibly competitive year, and while it's not as good as Purple Rain, Born In The U.S.A., She's So Unusual, or Private Dancer, it is a really solid, fun record.
I just included a little of his post-'80s work since that stuff never made a very big impact besides 2012's Tuskegee, which was all duet re-recordings of earlier hits. There's some decent later stuff, though. 1996's Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis-produced "I Wanna Take You Down," which uses the same Ohio Players sample that turned up on Jay-Z's "Brooklyn's Finest" a couple months later, which is crazy on a couple of levels because the Commodores were contemporaries of the Ohio Players. "Road To Heaven" was, weirdly, co-written by Richie and Murder Inc. hitmaker 7 Aurelius and produced by Lenny Kravitz, and it's great.
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