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Easy to choose? Lionel Richie’s greatest songs – ranked!
Forty years after Hello was released as a single, we rate the best of Richie’s work – solo and with Commodores, from Sly Stone-influenced funk to epic pop ballads
Try to detach Hello (released as a single in 1984, a few months after it debuted on Can’t Slow Down) from its video, with Richie’s hammy acting, its questionable plotline – is it 100% ethical for a teacher to be romantically pursuing a blind student? Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images Overshadowed by the presence of Easy and Brick House on the same, eponymous album, Zoom is nevertheless fantastic: a product of a time when Richie’s ballads were still rooted in soul music. The duet version, with Diana Ross, was a huge hit, but head instead to Richie’s original demo – appended to the reissue of his 1982 eponymous debut solo album – which strips the song of its blockbusting movie-theme qualities, revealing something more intimate, tender and affecting at its centre.
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