Lionel Richie is an African American singer and songwriter born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1949. While a student at Tuskegee Institute, he joined the Commodores, becoming a singer and saxophonist with the band in 1968, and he developed his career within a group whose recordings combined funk, soul and ballads.
Richie wrote and sang songs including "Easy," "Three Times a Lady," "Still" and "Sail On." Those recordings show a different side of the group from its more rhythm-driven material. His role as a songwriter developed alongside the contributions of the other musicians in the Commodores.
By the late 1970s, he was also writing for other performers. He composed "Lady" for Kenny Rogers and produced Rogers's Share Your Love album. In 1981, his duet with Diana Ross on "Endless Love" brought another prominent collaboration. After launching his solo recording career in 1982, his 1983 album Can't Slow Down carried hits including "All Night Long" and "Hello," spent fifty-nine weeks in the Billboard Top 10 and sold more than ten million copies in the United States. It won the Grammy for Album of the Year.
He and Michael Jackson co-wrote "We Are the World," the 1985 charity single recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa, which received the Song of the Year Grammy, and his song "Say You, Say Me" from the film White Nights won the 1986 Academy Award for Original Song.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame honored him in its recording category in 2003. In 2017 he received Kennedy Center Honors, and in 2022 the Library of Congress awarded him its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
