UNITED KINGDOM: SINGER LIONEL RICHIE SPEAKS ABOUT HIS NEW ALBUM 'LOUDER THAN WORDS'

Record ID: 386824

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: SINGER LIONEL RICHIE SPEAKS ABOUT HIS NEW ALBUM 'LOUDER THAN WORDS'
  • Date: 19th November 1996
  • Summary: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (NOVEMBER 19, 1996) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) (SOUNDBITE ENGLISH) RITCHIE SAYING "IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT BEFORE I GO FORWARD WITH ALL THIS NEW AND DIFFERENT KIND OF STUFF, LET ME GRAB THE CROWD FIRST THAT KNOWS LIONEL RICHIE FOR LIONEL RICHIE, YOU'LL GET SOME FUNK ON THERE THAT SOUNDS LIKE LIONEL RICHIE FROM COMMODORE DAYS, BECAUSE I FOUND OUT SOMETHING
  • Embargoed: 4th December 1996 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVAAAIFU775USYVSYO61IKGVQTZE
  • Story Text: He's had as many hits as Irving Berlin. At first he topped the charts with the Seventies masters of funk, The Commodores. Then he had a string of successes as a solo artist, and his record sales number hundreds of millions.

    Now Lionel Richie is back with a new album, "Louder Than Words", which he says encapsulates a career of many musical styles, from mainstream pop to country, to rhythm and blues and jazz.

    It has been four years since he worked in the recording studio; painful years, but a time of creative growth for Richie. His father died. His marriage disintegrated. A close friend died of Aids.

    Richie turned his pain into music: "I had something I had to get off my chest, so it was quite interesting that I used it as a diary. Instead of writing it and putting it away, I wrote it in the words of songs," he told Reuters.

    Richie had a little help from his friends in this therapeutic process, including his longtime producer James Anthony Carmichael and co-producer David Foster. He also forged a new working relationship with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis - best known for their work with Janet Jackson - on some of the songs.

    Richie was positively encouraged by Jam and Lewis to let the echoes of his past work filter through to the new album.

    "I went to do this song for the album, 'I Wanna Take You Down'", Richie said, "and I thought we were going to write something different. All they wanted to do was write a Commodores song, kept saying 'can you say Ow( Ow('." Richie was unconvinced, until Jam and Lewis explained.

    "They said 'Rich, you don't understand. What's old is brand new, they're sampling everything from the Seventies and the Eighties, and you are the original writer of that. You don't have to sample it. Write it.'" Richie wrote most of the album in his childhood home on the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama, where both his grandmother and mother had been teachers.

    The legendary composer Babyface (renowned for his work with Whitney Houston, Madonna and Toni Braxton) worked with Richie on one of the songs on the album, "Ordinary Girl".

    Asked to define the songs on "Louder Than Words" using one word for each, Richie spans a range of emotions from uncertainty to desire, from obsession to escape, hope, fantasy, need and commitment.

    After his personal traumas, he now seems to be at peace with himself.

    "I'm feeling better than ever, and only because I've weathered it. My father used to say to me years ago you're not really a whole person till you've been tested and you survive the test," Richie said. "Now I've been through this it's one of those things where I feel like a whole person, I know who am am basically".

    The album "Louder Than Words" will be released in Europe next year.
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