Top 7 Lionel Richie Songs of the '80s

As a consummate pop star of the 80s, Lionel Richie famously stacked up 13 consecutive Top 10 hits, a remarkable feat indeed. However, his propensity for pop singles inevitably meant the three albums he released contained little else in terms of commercial or critical appeal, assuming, of course, that all of the hits were actually good. And that’s a hefty assumption. That’s why I’ve chosen to select just over half of Richie’s signature tunes for my best-of list. Wheat from the chaff, they say.

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1. “Endless Love”This overwrought karaoke classic served as the primary catalyst for Richie’s unsurprising departure from the Commodores, after his duet with Diana Ross hit No. 1 on the pop charts in the summer of 1981 and stayed there for nine weeks. Best sung or lip-synched by the brave and self-assured with maximum facial contortions and gesticulation, the ballad boasts a memorable, gentle verse that explodes (if adult contemporary pop can do that) with a positively sublime bridge. Must stop now. Verklempt.

2. “My Love”I must confess I heard this one the other day on the radio, listened intently all the way through, and felt significantly better than I had just before during my drive home from work. OK, so maybe it wasn’t so much the song, but I choose to believe it was. Richie had a knack for taking all the darkness out of romance, and a love ballad has rarely been this effervescent and sunny before or since. At the same time, the tune never devolves into a cheesefest; it’s just a highly pleasant listen.

3. “You Are”Although Richie eliminated almost all soul/R&B aspects of his sound (what few there ever were) after he left the Commodores and embarked on his successful solo career, he manages to find a nifty groove on this song nevertheless. As usual, the singer amps things up perhaps a bit too far for the chorus, but in the verses and bridge Richie has probably never been more subtle and emotionally commanding. It’s a sumptuous and delicate performance, and I’ve always liked it, dammit. Are you satisfied?

4. “Stuck on You”Richie reveals a little eclecticism with this song, and though it’s not his only flirtation with country music, it is his best. The tune’s success also stems from its almost clinical laid-back approach to the love ballad. Once again, Richie walks a dangerously thin line by downplaying passion’s tempest in favor of a lived-in, tamed version of love. But somehow he invests the song with sufficient feeling anyway and handles his most important task effectively, to make his performance convincing.

5. “Running with the Night”While Richie the balladeer was never at his best on up-tempo numbers, this one is most definitely the lesser of three evils and far less embarrassing than either “All Night Long” or, especially, “Dancing on the Ceiling”. Luckily, on this tolerable selection, Richie refrains from attempting either a forced Latin/Caribbean vibe as he does on “All Night Long” or engage in abject silliness involving ceilings. Instead, he delivers a solid, if somewhat vanilla, mainstream pop/rock tune.

6. “Ballerina Girl”So I’ll cut through the suspense right now and confess that I’m leaving “Hello” off this lost, for the sake of my sanity if not for any remaining shreds of dignity. In the resulting void I submit this lesser-known but still somehow compelling ballad that perfectly captures Richie’s extreme romanticism, which borders on pathological here. Nonetheless, his composer’s gift for melody shines through as usual and results in a slow-dance special that epitomizes “easy listening.”

7. “Say You, Say Me”Back when his show still contained the phrase “late night” in its title, David Letterman employed this tune to great effect for a comedy bit. Richie’s music has always teetered right on the edge of unintentional comedy, but his melodic gifts cannot be stopped; they can't even be contained. As always, it’s best not to puzzle too much over the meaning of the lyrics or search for interesting layers. Even so, this latter-day Richie hit from the '80s captured something substantial about the decade.