Lionel Richie can't read music, yet wrote some of the biggest ballads ever sold
Lionel Richie once considered becoming an Episcopal priest, decided he wasn't cut out for it, and carried on with music despite never learning to read or write it. The result: Three Times a Lady, Endless Love, Hello, a co-writing credit on We Are the World and more than 90 million records sold.
Richie was born on June 20, 1949, in Tuskegee, Alabama, and grew up on the campus of the Tuskegee Institute in a house Booker T. Washington had given his grandparents. His father was an Army systems analyst, his mother a teacher and principal, and his grandmother a classical pianist. A television genealogy programme in 2011 found that his great-grandfather had probably been the son of a federal judge and slaveowner, and went on to lead a Black fraternal society founded in Nashville in 1879.
A tennis scholarship took him back to Tuskegee, where he marched in the band and earned an economics degree while forming a string of R&B groups. In 1968 he joined the Commodores as singer and saxophonist. After one record for Atlantic they moved to Motown, first opening for the Jackson 5, and built a following with funky dance tracks before Richie steered them toward romantic ballads such as Easy, Still and Sail On. In 1980 he wrote and produced Lady, a number one for Kenny Rogers.
Endless Love, his 1981 duet with Diana Ross, became one of the 20 best-selling singles in history and the biggest hit of either career. His solo debut the next year sold over four million copies, and Can't Slow Down in 1983 topped the Billboard 200 and sold more than 20 million, winning the Grammy for Album of the Year. We Are the World, the 1985 fundraising record he wrote with Michael Jackson, also sold over 20 million and took Song of the Year. Say You, Say Me, from the film White Nights, won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
He stepped away from recording for a decade from 1986 and has since released seven more studio albums. Since 2018 he has judged American Idol. Late honours include the Songwriters Hall of Fame's Johnny Mercer Award in 2016 and, in 2022, the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize and a place in the rock hall in Cleveland.
Source: Lionel Richie
