LOS ANGELES (Island/UMe) - It's hard to believe but one of the biggest selling artists in history has never before issued a live album in the U.S. Now he has. ENCORE! LIVE AT WEMBLEY ARENA (Island/UMe), released
September 28, 2004, is Lionel Richie's first live album available in the U.S.
Digitally remastered and with a tracklisting personally supervised by Richie, ENCORE! is a veritable live "greatest hits" from the superstar performer.
"I wanted to do this for a very simple reason," Richie says. "For the past 30 years I've been enjoying a show the crowd has never heard: the performance the audience puts on along with me."
For ENCORE!, recorded over three sold-out nights in 2001 at London's Wembley Arena, Richie performs 12 of his best-known hits spanning his days with The Commodores and his solo career.
In their studio versions, "Three Times A Lady" and "Still" were Commodores pop No 1s and the solo "Hello," "All Night Long (All Night)" and "Say You, Say Me" gold-certified pop, R&B and Adult Contemporary No 1s.
The other pop Top 10s heard are "Brick House," "Dancing On The Ceiling," "Running With The Night," "Penny Lover" and "Stuck On You." The R&B No 1 "Easy" and Top 10 Adult Contemporary "Angel" round out the set.
"Playing live is my chance to be completely wild and crazy," says Richie. "It's like time disappears and I'm in my living room, playing with a bunch of friends who stopped by for the afternoon. And the larger the crowd, the more fun I have! The live experience is so universal.
The audience knows every lyric, every guitar solo, every drumbeat. It's like the most elaborate karaoke night you could ever imagine. But that is what's so amazing about performing: in every country around the world, regardless of their language, people sing my songs along with me."
Richie has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, landed 22 Top 10 hits (No 1 songs in nine consecutive years), and won 10 American Music Awards, five Grammys, a Golden Globe, six People's Choice Awards and a Best Original Song Oscar for "Say You (Say Me)" from the film WHITE NIGHTS.
His landmark 1983 Grammy Album of the Year CAN'T SLOW DOWN has been awarded the rarified Diamond Award from the RIAA, representing sales of 10 million-plus copies.
Recently, Richie has enjoyed a phenomenal resurgence. In 2002, with two new studio tracks added, ENCORE! was released internationally to great acclaim.
In 2003, more than 20 years after his first solo hit, his new greatest hits package THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION (with ENCORE!'s two new studio tracks) charted Top 20 pop/Top 40 R&B, quickly went gold and is now approaching platinum. In 2004, his JUST FOR YOU album cracked the R&B Top 30 with its title track Top 10 AC.
For Lionel Richie, the encores keep on coming.
