Lionel Richie – The Story behind 3 of his songs

.

Lionel Richie is a successful, talented singer, song writer and record producer. He has been around for a long time. I am a big fan of his music and I share why he wrote some of his songs.

✰*•˛

Easy

Lionel Richie sang in a band called The Commodores in the '60s, before he went solo. One day while in the band, he was given a book – 366 pages that detailed exactly, where he would be for the next year. His year had been mapped out for him. What the. ...?!

He didn’t like it and asked himself why anyone would want to put chains on him, as he had paid his dues to make it. Later, he thought the words made nice Lyrics and he turned it into a song – called "Easy."

The Lyrics are: "Why would anyone wanna put chains on me, I’ve paid my dues to make it.” You can hear the lyrics in second verse of the song.

.

✰*•˛

Lady

Lionel Richie was the song writer in the Commodores and it got to a point that they were not getting on well in the band. Some people get envious of others success.

Kenny Rogers, a Country singer approached him to write a song for him. The timing was perfect because there was strife in the band. He wrote “Lady”. The song reached number 1 in the Country Chart, the adult contemporary chart and the African/American single Chart. It also received 2 grammy nominations.

.

✰*•˛

Endless Love

"Lady" was so successful that Franco Zeffirelli approached Lionel to write a theme song for a movie starring Brooke Shields. Lionel Richie gave him a song which his band members had rejected, when he gave it to them. The song was called “Endless Love.” (A Duet with Diana Ross). It was a huge success and stayed at no 1 on the billboard hot 100 for 9 weeks. I bet his band members must have been cringing. What they rejected, became a huge success for him.

Those are the 3 songs I will share for now. I wrote about "Ballerina Girl" a while ago. (Link is below).

Lionel eventually left the Commodores to go Solo – excellent idea. His first Album (Lionel Richie) was a hit world wide and his second (Can’t slow down) was even bigger, selling over 8 Million copies. Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic and it won 2 Grammy Awards. - The rest is history....

.

Attaining Success.

Sometimes in life, change or Success requires you to break free. It reminds me of Beyonce. If she stayed in Destiny’s Child, she would never have become the great artist she is today.

The Commodores still play, but have never achieved the success they had in the 1980s with Lionel Richie.

.

٩(•̮̮̃•̃)۶ Did Lionel Richie tell me this?

I found this out from a Documentary on TV about Lionel Richie. It was so interesting to watch, I thought I'd write about it.

.

Do you have a favourite Lionel Richie song?

.