Lionel Richie's Back to Front isn't just a definitive greatest hits collection, it's a reminder of Richie's supreme strengths as an R&B singer-songwriter. From the gentle sweep of "Do It to Me" to the earnest lovelorn crooning of "Hello," Richie's ballads are timeless. Even the borderline sappy "Endless Love" shines despite cosinger Diana Ross's histrionics. Also featured is "Still" and "Say You, Say Me," and while the faster songs–the Caribbean-inspired rhythms of "All Night Long" and the '80s synthpop of "Running with the Night"–are weaker, they hardly detract from this otherwise sterling survey.
On Can't Slow Down, his second solo album, Lionel Richie ran with the sound and success of his eponymous debut, creating an album that was designed to be bigger and better. It's entirely possible that he took a cue from Michael Jackson's Thriller, which set out to win over listeners of every corner of the mainstream pop audience, because Richie does a similar thing with Can't Slow Down – he plays to the MOR adult contemporary audience, to be sure, but he ups the ante on his dance numbers, creating grooves that are funkier, and he even adds a bit of rock with the sleek nocturnal menace of "Running With the Night," one of the best songs here.
Lionel Richie's eighth studio album as a solo artist is led by "I Call It Love," a lightly buoyant and bittersweet single produced by Swedish hitmakers Stargate, the same team that helped boost Ne-Yo's In My Own Words. It's an ideal match, one that should've been made more than once. Too much of Coming Home is merely pleasant – particularly the adult contemporary fare, with the exception of "I Love You" – or too conscious of remaining with the times. While the likes of "Why" and "Up All Night" involved Richie's songwriting in some capacity, just about any twentysomething vocalist could be fronting them; the same goes for the Jermaine Dupri-produced "What You Are." The stab at emotionally cleansing reggae of the Bob Marley variety, "Stand Down," comes up short as well. That said, at least half the album should satisfy Richie's longtime followers.
"My job is very simple! I'm here to play the hits! All…Night…Long!" Lionel Richie shouts these words early in Hello from Las Vegas, not as a way of introducing his smash hit from 1983, but as an explanation for the revue the audience is about to experience. Whether that audience was at his 2018 Planet Hollywood residency or at home, they're ready to hear the hits and nothing but hits, which are precisely what Richie delivers in this career-spanning concert.