Lionel Richie
R&B Singer — born 1949
Lionel Richie is a famous American singer, musician and actor.
Lionel Richie is an American singer-songwriter whose six-decade career — first as a member of Motown group the Commodores and then as a multiple-Grammy-winning solo artist — has produced one of the most-iconic American R&B and adult-contemporary songbooks of the late 20th century. He was born Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. on June 20, 1949, in Tuskegee, Alabama. He attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) on a tennis scholarship, where he met the future Commodores members in the late 1960s.
The Commodores — initially as the Mighty Mystics and then as the Mystics before becoming the Commodores in 1970 — were signed to Motown Records in 1972. The 1970s Commodores commercial peak produced the singles "Brick House" (1977), "Easy" (1977), "Three Times a Lady" (1978, the Hot 100 #1), and "Still" (1979, the Hot 100 #1). Richie's ballad-songwriting style shaped the Commodores second-half-of-1970s sound.
His 1981 solo debut single "Endless Love" — a duet with Diana Ross from the 1981 Franco Zeffirelli film of the same name — became the bestselling Motown single of all time at that point. His 1982 self-titled debut solo album Lionel Richie sold over 4 million copies. His 1983 second album Can't Slow Down sold over 20 million copies worldwide and produced the singles "All Night Long (All Night)," "Hello," "Penny Lover," and "Stuck on You."
His 1985 co-writing of "We Are the World" with Michael Jackson — the charity single that raised over $63 million for African famine relief — produced one of the American humanitarian-music moments of the 1980s. He won four Grammy Awards and the 1985 Best Original Song Academy Award for "Say You, Say Me" (from the 1985 film White Nights). He has continued to record and tour into his seventies. He has been a judge on ABC's American Idol since 2018. His daughter Nicole Richie is a American TV personality.
His name Lionel is from the Old French Lionel, the diminutive of lion — yielding "young lion" or "little lion." Lionel has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.
About the name Lionel
Gender: Male · Origin: French
Young Lion.