Lionel Richie reveals he 'freaked out' when asked to write a duet with Diana Ross
He described the success of 'Endless Love' as beyond his wildest imagination
It's been more than four decades since the legend that is Lionel Richie joined forces with pop icon, Diana Ross, to release their Platinum single 'Endless Love' — and yet it's still considered one of the most beloved songs of all times.
Now, in an interview with Greatest Hits Radio's Jackie Brambles, Lionel said the idea of writing the track made him feel huge amounts of pressure. During our exclusive chat, the soul singer revealed how the duet came about:
“First of all Endless Love is the name of the movie," he said. "And of course they asked me, 'would you like to write a song?' And I said listen you don’t need a heavy song, you just need something that’s going to be like a love story.
“So I went in to see the movie, I saw it and I said ‘you know guys, you need something like ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.’ (sings) It came out just like that.
"Now here’s the joke. The joke is Marvin Hamlisch and other people had also submitted songs, but I am from The Commodores and we don’t pitch songs complete, and so we walk in and we hum things, and if they said they don’t like it, then we move on to another song. You don’t get mad because you spent three days working on a song that they said no to. So I didn’t waste any time.
“So I basically hummed this ba ba. And of course, the guy said ‘thank you very much Lionel, we’ll keep you in mind.’ By the way I did not leave a cassette or anything back there for them.
“And finally I got a phone call, and they said ‘Lionel can we get more of that ba ba song?’ and I said sure. And I kind of remembered what I did and I went back in and they said we only need it to be an instrumental. I said ‘I can get that for you’ and so I did the instrumental.
“And then somewhere along the line they said, ‘you know there’s a part in the movie the lady has to sing a first verse of this song, to the guy. Could you write a first verse?’ And I wrote 'my love, there’s only you in my life, the only thing that’s right, my first love,' right?
“And they said ‘we wanna make this a duet. We’ve decided that Diana Ross...’
“I am now freaking out now because Diana Ross is the top of the food chain, number one, and number two I have never written a duet before in my life. And then thirdly, 'who do you think should sing the duet with her?' Are you kidding me? The answer is me! Who do you think it’s gonna be!
“But now the pressure now becomes... I’m doing three albums. I’m doing Kenny Rogers from 10-6, The Commodores from 7-12 and the only time I have left is 1-4 to do this duet with Diana Ross, oh my god.
“And the answer is, through all this craziness, it became a hit record of a life! And the rest is history.
“But if you ask me right now how it came about, that was divine guidance, because I didn’t know how it was going to come out but it came out beyond my wildest imagination.”
How can I listen to Jackie Bramble's interview with Lionel Richie?
If you missed it, you can listen back to Lionel Richie's full Great Conversations with Jackie Brambles here.
When is Jackie Brambles on Greatest Hits Radio?
You can catch Jackie Brambles on Greatest Hits Radio each weekday evening from Monday to Thursday, from 7pm-10pm.
Special Lionel Richie edition of PopMaster
Anyone lucky enough to be seeing Lionel at any of his upcoming UK concerts will be able to play along with very special Lionel Richie edition of PopMaster ahead of the show.
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