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
Country music has always been about as close to R&B as you can possibly get. We're storytellers.
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.
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.
I want to let everybody know that I'm from there, and country is Tuskegee. Or should I say rather, my country is Tuskegee. I was born and raised there, it's not just someplace I passed through one day.
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.
I am a country boy and proud of it.
My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry.
Country is bringing in a little rock element... a little '80s element. Melody is king now. But its just in the music, its not so much in the songwriting, which is still very basic to the storytelling aspect of it.
Country music has always been about as close to R&B as you can possibly get. We're storytellers.
It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.
Father' meant to me provider... and I was working myself to death... but I wasn't physically home; I wasn't there every day.
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.
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.