Lionel Richie
Can't Slow Down (Deluxe Edition)
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Lionel Richie exemplifies the spirit of Motown today. He's not an original talent like Stevie Wonder or a historical emblem like Diana Ross or a sensational performer like Michael Jackson. Instead, he's chairman of the board of corporate pop-soul, masterfully synthesizing everything we love about Motown, a label whose style–past and present–is itself a canny blend of post-rock & roll pop styles. Until very recently, Richie has mostly been associated with a string of soupy ballads, but with Can't Slow Down, he has broadened the scope of his music in an effort to please all the people all the time. Most of the time, he does. Certainly, for those of us truly bored by songs
Read More like "Truly," the hit single "All Night Long (All Night)" was a real breakthrough for Lionel Richie. Not so much a ripoff of Stevie Wonder as a loving salute to his increasingly internationalist viewpoint, the tune uses steel drums, cool vocal harmonies, Latin horns and multilingual chanting to suggest a musical rainbow coalition of American pop, Afro-Cuban music and carnival time in Rio. Richie sings in a faintly Caribbean accent that again echoes Wonder, whose tribute to Bob Marley "Master Blaster (Jammin')" brought reggae inflections into mainstream pop in a way Marley himself never managed to do (and "Master Blaster" is clearly the prototype for Richie's Latin hustle). But all these little cops are hardly objectionable–they add to the fun, and they're part of Richie's method throughout Can't Slow Down. "Penny Lover," a very different kind of song, grabs you just as immediately as "All Night Long," and for the same reasons. It's a brilliant pastiche of familiar pop fragments–the melody of Peaches and Herb's "Reunited," phrases from Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By," the harmonic elegance of the Drifters and the lovesick croon of Sam Cooke. You loved all those things before, and you'll love them again. Sound crass? Sure it is, but it's an honorable tradition among the staunch eclectics who make up pop's second rank, from Billy Joel to August Darnell: if you can't innovate, imitate. And the more honest they are about their sources, the better. When he was fronting the Commodores, Richie usually took a break during the funk numbers. And though hits like "Lady (You Bring Me Up)" and the George Benson-ish "Serves You Right," from last year's Lionel Richie, indicated that he was no stranger to a groove, it's a delightful surprise to find that "All Night Long" isn't the token dance track on Can't Slow Down. The title cut shamelessly borrows the seductive rhythm hook from Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something" and builds it into an urgent musical portrait of a guy who keeps his motor running at all times, in more ways than one. That song is almost exclusively a collaboration between Richie and David Cochrane, who provides all the instrumentation on synthesizer, except for his own bluesy rock guitar. Cochrane
Though already established thanks to his work with the Commodores, Can't Slow Down, his second solo album, catapulted Lionel Richie into 1980s pop superstardom. Five of these tracks became major, chart-topping hits, boosted by memorable videos on MTV. Includes "All Night Long," "Hello," and "Stuck On You.
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