Lionel Richie
Coming Home
Island Def Jam
One out of five stars
Whether or not Lionel Richie is reaping the benefits of Nicole’s anorexia publicity is moot-this album still stinks.
But what is to be expected from a man who hasn’t done anything relevant since The Commodores-wait, was that even relevant?
I don’t know. I hadn’t been born.
What I do know is that this over-produced, plastic-wrapped R&B-soul-salsa-reggae fusion stuff is abhorrent.
Richie tries to be Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Bob Marley and Gloria Estefan (to name a few), and he fails at every juncture.
One song has a Latin dance theme and the next is a wannabe rude boy synthesized reggae travesty.
And those songs are actually the highlights of this heinous album.
Most of the other songs are attempts at the dim-the-lights-and-get-seeeeexxxy mood.
When I listened to this album, all I could think of was how much I wanted to dim the lights and overdose on sleeping pills.
Now I know you’re probably thinking that I should commit suicide to an album I like, right?
No.
If I took a bottle of sleeping pills and put on an album I really like, such as, I don’t know, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, I’d be fighting for consciousness just so I could listen to the rest of the disc.
With Coming Home, I’d be desperate to leave a world that produced such a vapid, synthetic, abominable waste of studio time.
How to best sum this up? One way: This album reminds me of everything that is wrong with music-creating pointless, insipid noise just to make a few bucks-and then, to grind some salt in the wounds, it’s a blatant exploitation of a daughter’s illness and trash-reality notoriety for publicity campaign (I saw the press release-trust).
Another way: Man, oh man, oh man.
I have a prescription to fill?
