Personnel includes: Lionel Richie (vocals, piano); Jimmy Connors, Deborah Thomas, David Cochrane (electric guitar, acoustic piano, bass synthesizer, background vocals); Darrell Jones (electric guitar); Richie Zito (guitar); Michael Baddicker (synthesizer, vocoder); Ndugu East, John Robinson (drums); Deborah Thomas (background vocals).Producers: Lionel Richie, James Anthony Carmichael.Lionel Richie is forever enshrined in the popular imagination for his ballads, but his first solo album is more wide-ranging than that. Besides the three hit singles ("Truly" and "My Love" are classic Richie ballads, while the sleek and slightly more uptempo "You Are" is possibly Richie's finest solo single), LIONEL RICHIE focuses primarily on glossy early '80s dance pop/R&B. Richie and Commodores producer James Anthony Carmichael move beyond that band's beginnings as a loose, horn-led funk group, using synths and bell-like electric pianos over metronomic (but not stiff or artificial) rhythm tracks. Although LIONEL RICHIE came out several months prior to THRILLER, that album is a very close comparison sonically; slick pop-R&B grooves like "Serves You Right" and "Tell Me" have a similar mix of Top 40 smarts and soulful heart. The 2003 reissue of LIONEL RICHIE includes two bonus tracks, an extraneous instrumental version of "You Are" (the flipside to its 12" single) and a surprisingly effective solo demo of "Endless Love" that is nearly as good as the duet smash with Diana Ross.

• Genre: Pop
• RSD Date: n/a
• Format: Vinyl
• Released: 12/08/2017