Lionel Richie shares the stories behind the duets
Posted on March 24, 2012 by
Lionel Richie is the first to admit that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he teamed with Shania Twain for his classic Diana Ross nine-week No. 1 “Endless Love.”
Richie says he asked Twain to meet him in Nashville, Los Angeles and Miami for a recording session and she turned down each invitation. Instead, she asked Richie to fly to the Bahamas to record the song in the studio she has in her home.
The trip, Richie said, was full of surprises — and not necessarily the good kind.
“I didn’t know she had not done a vocal or been on stage in seven years,” Richie recalled. “We went in, and I wake up the next morning to a full-on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) network camera crew for her show entitled How Shania Found Her Voice, which I didn’t know she had lost it. So she walks in and announces to me, 15 minutes before we are to go in and sing, that she can’t do it.”
Richie asked to speak to Twain privately away from the cameras. He joked, “So in case anyone saw me choking her to death, we couldn’t exactly verify it.”
Richie said he told Twain they had something in common — that they were both scared to death.
“She said, ‘But you are Lionel Richie,’ ” he recalled. “And I said, ‘But you are Shania Twain.’ ”
Twain told Richie she hadn’t been on stage or sung in seven years, and the legend made it his mission to prove that she still had the vocal prowess she had when she was at the top of her game.
“When you hear the first time she comes in on this record, I left that on for her to hear forever,” Richie said. “That is the first note she ever tried. After seven years, I ask you, ‘Does she have a problem?’ The answer is, ‘no.’ But, she turned around after she hit that note and looked at me, and I’d go (thumbs up.) So that’s the beauty of that.”
Blake Shelton gave Richie a different problem. Instead of not wanting to sing, Shelton’s voice was so strong from the get-go that Richie had a hard time figuring out where he fit in on the new version of “You Are.”
That is, after he could see through the plaid.
“I’ve never seen that much plaid shirt walk in the door,” Richie said of first meeting Shelton, in reference to his 6-foot-5 frame. “I think everyone in Nashville must wake up in the morning and do push-ups, because I just look like the most undernourished brother in the whole world trying to sing with Blake Shelton.”
Before meeting Shelton, Richie had decided that he would start the song off and then prompt Shelton to come in later. Shelton had different ideas.
“I made the mistake with Blake, you know, not to put any pressure on him. I said, ‘Just sing it down a couple of times and then I’ll come on in and put my vocal on it,’” Richie recalled. “But his opening line was (so strong) — first of all, I loved it, but then where do I put Lionel Richie on this record? He’s going to open the song because I loved the way he came in, but I spent the rest of the record trying to figure out how am I going to get on Blake Shelton’s song called ‘You Are.’ ”
Kenny Chesney is such a fan of Lionel Richie that he drunk-dialed the legend in the middle of the night and then sang a song to his voicemail, Richie reveals.
“Kenny is about the most expressive brother I have ever met in my life,” Richie says. “He holds nothing back. I didn’t know that when I first met him, but I should have known after that first phone call.”
Richie had sent Chesney a message suggesting the country star perform “All Night Long (All Night)” on the album. Chesney had other ideas, and he couldn’t wait to share them.
“The next morning I woke up, and there was a voicemail,” Richie recalled. “‘Lionel, oh my God, Lionel. Oh my God, Lionel,” Richie recalls of the voicemail, and then explains that Chesney proceeded to sing his favorite song, “My Love,” into the telephone. “Oh Lionel, I love you, Lionel,” Richie quotes Chesney as saying. “Lionel, I love ‘My Love’ and I love you.’ And I realized Kenny Chesney loved me, and Kenny Chesney loves ‘My Love.’ ”
The next day, Chesney called Richie and apologized for the phone call. And when he showed up at the studio to record “My Love” with Richie, he had another big fan in tow: his mother.
“(Chesney) said, ‘This is impossible,’ ” Richie recalled. “My mother has never come to a recording studio since I’ve been in the business, and she said, ‘Are you doing Lionel Richie? I love Lionel Richie. I’m coming to the studio.’ And his mother walked in. And his mother said, ‘I love you, Lionel.’ And Kenny said, ‘I love you, Lionel.’ So Kenny and his mother love me very much. And that’s the story that I’ll carry forever.
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