Birth name: Lionel Brockman Richie Jr
Date of birth: 20 June 1949
Place of birth: Tuskegee, Alabama
Record labels: Island/Mercury/Motown
Career highlights: Four-time Grammy Award winner Highest Charting Singles: Hello, number one 1984, All Night Long, number two, 1983, Truly, number six, 1982, Dancing On The Ceiling, number seven, 1986 

Lionel Richie started his music career in the much-loved 70s Motown group The Commodores. After a string of hits, including Easy, he branched out alone.  His debut album, Lionel Richie, produced another chart-topping single, Truly, which continued the smoochy style of his Commodores-era ballads.

He went on to become one of the most successful male solo artists of the 80s, and was eclipsed only by Prince and Michael Jackson in the popularity stakes.

Lionel dominated the pop charts during that decade with an incredible run of 13 consecutive Top Ten hits.

As his popularity skyrocketed, Richie moved farther away from his R&B origins and concentrated more on adult contemporary balladry that made him a number one heart throb with women across the globe.

In 1983 he released Can't Slow Down which shot him into the first rank of international superstars. The album also won two Grammy Awards including Album Of The Year. It spawned the number one hit All Night Long. Several more Top 10 hits followed, the most successful of which was the ballad Hello in 1984, a sentimental love song that spent 15 weeks in the British charts.