![]() ![]() Both inspired videos starring onetime Playboy Playmate, Ola Ray. ![]() Both feature a song with a hard rock guitar solo. Both feature a track incorporating a pseudo-African dialect. Both Thriller and Can’t Slow Down kick off with energetic dance numbers. Similarly, Richie had already released his self-titled 1982 solo debut to some success, and was expected - especially by Motown head Berry Gordy - to top it. Thriller was Jackson’s second solo album as an adult, and coming after the success of 1979’s Off the Wall, people expected big things from him. ![]() Like Jackson, Richie was a former member of a successful Motown act trying to carve out a distinctive solo career. 2 black male artist in America, right behind Michael Jackson, whose Thriller had been released a year earlier and seems to have provided a blueprint of sorts for Richie’s success. Although Richie’s career has since stalled, at the time he was probably the No. Originally released in 1983, the album was the biggest success of the ex-Commodore’s solo career, with each of its five singles - “All Night Long”, “Penny Lover”, “Stuck on You”, “Running with the Night”, and “Hello” - reaching the Top Ten. While the music on it is slick, commercial, and overly sentimental, it’s still catchy as hell and executed with an incredible amount of artistry. I’m ashamed at just how much I’m enjoying the Deluxe Edition of Lionel Richie‘s Can’t Slow Down. ![]()
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