The ex – Commodore co – founder, has been around for the past five decades and gives you an opportunity to sit back and take stock of the 9 tracks on his debut solo album. The four times Grammy, an Oscar and a Golden Globe winner, brings you an album that is appealing with love songs that you will truly cherish.

Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores were making good music, but Richie’s decision to go solo changed everything for him and the future of The Commodores. Truly the debut single from the album was a great ballad which continued the style of his ballads with the Commodores and launched his career as one of the most successful balladeers of the 1980s.

The opening track Serves You Right is a reminder of Disco days gone, yet it serves as a prelude to what 1980s music would become. The song details a relationship in which Richie’s significant other left for another man whose love turned out to not be so. Wandering Stranger is a song talks about feeling lost. The song does not disappoint. From his first album were other greats like You Are and My Love that got him brownie points with many who followed his music. The last two songs highlight Richie’s writing, vocal, and instrumental ability and are the gems of this release. You Mean More to Me and Just Put Some Love in Your Heart prove that this is surely an outpouring of his feelings. You are possibly paves the foundation where Richie’s later duet with Diana Ross, Endless Love was born. These are soul and Motown classics, most of them. The album hit No. 3 on the music charts and sold over 4 million copies.

Most of the songs are sing-along to, easy to connect with and showing that a great songwriter and arranger Lionel Ritchie is There can be no "good or bad" with Lionel Richie. He was a seventies guy and the next few album cemented his growth to all new highs. He is all good, but this particular LP played on pulls my heart strings, mixed with both romantic and breakup songs.

The aging singer – songwriter has penned most of the lyrics keeping them simple so that the titles say the entire thought before going into the story.

Conclusion? Richie’s willingness to take chances in his albums is well known, coupled with talent for viewing the world with a guile that charms.

A great spin.

Label: Motown Record Corporation

Released on : 1983

Rating: ****

Reviewed by Verus Ferreira