Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie
Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr.is an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer and actor. Beginning in 1968, he was a member of the musical group Commodores signed to Motown Records. Richie made his solo debut in 1982 with the album Lionel Richie and the number-one hit "Truly". He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists of all time...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionR&B Singer
Date of Birth20 June 1949
CityTuskegee, AL
CountryUnited States of America
Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.
By growing up in Alabama, I had a melting pot of the whole pie: R&B, gospel, country.
No one can deny, this love I have inside, and I'll give it all to you, my endless love.
Simplicity is the key to what I do.
I just had to find all my friends that used to be in the business. As I say, the music business didn't die, it just moved to Nashville.
I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry, Dottie West, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens... not realizing it was influencing me as much as it was.
It was very interesting in my world, because I grew up as a fan and I did not know that there was a thing called R&B, pop, country, classical - I just knew that I loved music.
I knew I was going to do a country album one day. But I was just trying to figure out for the life of me, what we were going to do to make it different, unique.
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.