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Classic Recordings: Can’t Slow Down – Lionel Ritchie

Eight songs, five hit singles, and roughly twenty million copies sold. Can't Slow Down is the sound of a man who had already conquered country radio deciding to take everything else.

Can't Slow Down, 1983

Lionel Richie had spent the 1970s as the frontman and principal songwriter of The Commodores, writing "Easy," "Three Times a Lady" and "Sail On" — ballads so successful that they arguably obscured how good a funk band the Commodores actually were. He went solo in 1982, and in 1983 released this.

Can't Slow Down won the Grammy for Album of the Year and sold on a scale that puts it among the biggest records of the decade. What is striking about it now is the range: eight tracks that take in Caribbean-influenced pop, a country-leaning ballad, a synth-driven rocker and one of the most-played love songs ever written, all in under forty minutes.

Richie's particular gift was writing songs that sounded like standards on first hearing. That is not a small thing, and very few writers of any era manage it.

What to listen for

"All Night Long (All Night)" is the album's masterstroke — a soca and calypso-influenced record with an invented pseudo-African chant in the middle eight, which Richie has cheerfully admitted is nonsense. He performed it at the closing ceremony of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to an audience of billions.

"Hello" is the ballad that became inescapable, helped by one of the most-parodied videos in history. Underneath the sentiment it is a genuinely well-built song, with a minor-key verse that earns the major-key chorus.

"Stuck On You" is the country crossover — Richie has always had a natural affinity with Nashville, and it went top one on the country chart in an era when that was rare for a Black artist.

"Running With The Night" is the rock record, with a guitar solo by Steve Lukather of Toto. "Penny Lover" and "Love Will Find A Way" are the deeper cuts, and the title track is the funkiest thing here.

Go deeper

The Commodores' earlier albums are the essential correction to Richie's balladeer image — Machine Gun and Caught in the Act are serious funk records, and "Brick House" is theirs.

Dancing on the Ceiling (1986) followed and was nearly as successful.

And it is worth remembering the other thing he did in this period: co-writing "We Are the World" with Michael Jackson in 1985, and "Lady" for Kenny Rogers. For a stretch in the mid-1980s, Lionel Richie was arguably the most successful songwriter alive.

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