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Lionel Richie stuck on nostalgia
11/26/2006 9:50 PM, Reuters
Tuesday's American Music
Awards featured a flashback segment with Lionel Richie in a
heavily sequined jacket from his trophy-winning peak in the
mid-1980s.
There were no trophies to be had Friday at the Kodak
Theater in Los Angeles, and for all intents and purposes his
concert also was a rewind experience. Richie has a new album,
"Coming Home," to promote, but he spent more time playing old
Commodores songs, and a preponderance of synthesizer sounds
guaranteed that much of the evening's material would sound
dated and unimaginative.
In his defense, Richie warned early in the two-hour show
that it was "the tour before the tour," implying that the set
list and arrangements might get a tune-up before he commits to
a routine. But if he uses his Kodak moments as a gauge, he'll
be serving up nostalgia by the pound when he hits the road,
because this audience, mostly in their 40s and 50s, seemed
quite content to thumb through the memories of Richie's musical
yearbook.
To be fair, Richie did offer some enhancements to a few of
his songs. "Love Will Conquer All" featured the most attractive
transition, recast in a quasi-acoustic tropical groove.
Elsewhere, he dropped in some unusual outside musical
references: Laid Back's "White Horse" got oddly wedged into
"Running With the Night," Van Halen's "Jump" filled in a few
cracks during "Dancing on the Ceiling," and the Ohio Players'
"Fire" was mashed up quite effectively with "Brick House."
Richie also provided the obligatory solo set, dealing
piano-and-vocal treatments of "Still," "Sail On" and "Oh No."
Those scaled-down performances could have given the couples in
attendance some time to frame their own relationships within
the evening's backward-glancing mood and hopefully walk away
with some positive, look-how-far-we've-come romantic vibes. But
Richie broke the emotional atmosphere after each song by
rushing to the foot of the stage, arms spread, goading the
crowd into applause. In that action, Richie torpedoed his own
songs' potency, instead focusing attention on his apparent need
to relive his glory days.
The biggest positive in the set was the simple reminder of
the depth of his catalog. The bulk of the 25 songs were hits,
and in many cases -- "You Are" and "Stuck on You" are prime
examples -- Richie's proven ability to package the right words
with a catchy melody make songwriting appear deceptively
simple.
Many of his songs could use a bit of scrubbing to make them
sound a little less anachronistic, but even if Richie intends
to make his living by remembering the good ol' days, he could
at least pull back on the self-promotion and trust his songs to
sell themselves. They're the real reason people are willing to
pay $70 to see him.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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