Lionel Richie – All Night Long (All Night)

“All Night Long (All Night)” – Single by Lionel Richie from the album Can’t Slow Down
B-side: “Wandering Stranger”
Released: August 31, 1983
Label: Motown
Songwriter: Lionel Richie
Producers: Lionel Richie and James Anthony Carmichael
Charted No.1 in US and No.2 in UK

Richie wrote the song himself and released it as the lead single from his second solo album, Can’t Slow Down. It went to #1 in America, as did “Truly” from his first album.

Richie was one of the most successful songwriter/performers of the ’70s and ’80s, with a brigade of hits as a solo artist, with his band the Commodores (which he left in 1982), and with various duet partners, including his 1981 chart topper with Diana Ross, “Endless Love”.

A young Richard Marx, before he found fame with his own hits such as “Right Here Waiting,” supplied backing vocals on this track.

The accompanying music video for “All Night Long (All Night)” was produced by former Monkee and TV video pioneer Michael Nesmith and directed by Bob Rafelson.

The song lyrics were written primarily in English, but Richie has admitted in at least one press interview that “African” lyrics in the song, such as “Tam bo li de say de moi ya” and “Jambo jumbo”, were in fact gibberish. Richie has described these portions of the song as a “wonderful joke”, written when he discovered that he lacked the time to hire a translator to contribute the foreign-language lyrics he wished to include in the song.

Music video by Lionel Richie performing All Night Long (All Night). (C) 1983 Motown Records, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

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