Tag Archives: Lionel Richie

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Song of the Day #6,377: ‘Say You, Say Me’ – Lionel Richie

Like yesterday’s Throwback Weekend song, the #1 hit the week of December 21, 1985, was written for a movie. In this case, the film was White Nights, a Cold War drama starring Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov about a pair of dancers trapped in the Soviet Union.

I vaguely remember the film as a solid piece of mid-80s adult entertainment. I imagine the studio was chasing the success of another music-based drama, 1983’s Flashdance. The film had a decent pedigree, with Taylor Hackford directing and Helen Mirren and Isabella Rossellini in supporting roles.

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Song of the Day #5,797: ‘Hello’ – Lionel Richie

Throwing back to the week of May 19, 1984, we find Lionel Richie’s cheesy ballad ‘Hello,’ which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.

This was the second song from the hit album Can’t Slow Down to reach the top spot, following ‘All Night Long (All Night).’ The album’s three other singles all reached the top ten, on the way to making this one of the top-selling albums of the 80s.

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Song of the Day #5,499: ‘All Night Long (All Night)’ – Lionel Richie

I think there’s little debate over whether Lionel Richie belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but a better question is whether he should have made it as a member of the Commodores before (or instead of) making it as a solo artist.

To be fair, Richie has had a stellar solo career: five #1 hits, another eight in the top 10, two multi-platinum albums, one diamond album, and all of that in the course of just six years. He also had a beautiful blind woman create a photorealistic sculpture of his head in the oddly creepy video for ‘Hello.’

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Song of the Day #4,281: ‘Running With the Night’ – Lionel Richie

This is surely the first and only list on which I’ll ever have a Lionel Richie album ahead of a Bob Dylan album, but I can’t deny the consistent excellence of Richie’s Can’t Slow Down, my #10 album of 1983.

Can’t Slow Down enjoyed considerable critical and commercial success, and even bested Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. and Prince’s Purple Rain for the Album of the Year Grammy. I can’t say I agree with that particular outcome, but it’s certainly a notch in this album’s belt.

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Song of the Day #2,418: ‘Love Will Find a Way’ – Lionel Richie

lionel_richieI recently bought Lionel Richie’s Can’t Stop Now on an impulse after getting ‘Stuck On You’ stuck in my head one afternoon.

It’s a great album. Six of its eight tracks were major hits. Today’s SOTD is one of the two that weren’t, but it too is a silky piece of soulful pop balladry.

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