Born on June 20, 1949, in Tuskegee, Alabama, Lionel Richie first rose to fame in the 1970s as a singer and songwriter for the Motown group the Commodores, writing hits like "Easy" and "Three Times a Lady". His solo career exploded in the 1980s with the multi-platinum album Can't Slow Down (1983), which sold over 20 million copies and featured the number-one hits "All Night Long" and "Hello". Richie also co-wrote the iconic charity single "We Are the World" with Michael Jackson in 1985, and his duet "Endless Love" with Diana Ross remains one of the biggest-selling singles of all time. Having sold over 90 million records, he has won four Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for the song "Say You, Say Me". In 2022, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, all while serving as a judge on American Idol. Interestingly, Richie grew up on the campus of the Tuskegee Institute in a home gifted to his grandparents by Booker T. Washington, and he initially studied economics on a tennis scholarship before briefly considering the priesthood.