Lionel Brockman Richie’s life journey has a lot of twist and turns. Growing up on the Tuskegee campus of the famous black college right in his home town, he dropped out of the university after his sophomore year. After a brief time considering becoming an episcopal church, he devoted himself to music fully by the mid 60’s. He became the lead singer and sax player of the Commodores in 1968. After a brief stint at Atlantic, the Commodores struck gold at Motown as a major funk band during the mid 70’s. By the late 70’s, Richie’s contributions to the band were mainly as a singer/songwriter.
In 1982, Richie released his self titled solo debut. It turned out to be a 4x platinum hit for him. But mainly on the strength of ballads like “Truly” and the uptempo pop of “You Are”. At this point, the funkiness he displayed in the Commodores would be album tracks for him. His next album,1983’s Can’t Slow Down was a major crossover success for him-a diamond charting album in the vein of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Musically, the hits he was getting were a lot more diverse-from the Caribbean pop of “All Night Long” to the new wave rock of “Running With The Night”. Then there was “Love Will Find A Way”.
A slow,gated drum starts out the song. Then the close bass/rhythm guitar interaction. At the beginning, a Fender Rhodes is carrying the minor chorded lead melody. The rhythm guitar perfectly accents that-with the strings rising just as Richie’s first vocal chorus arriving. There’s also a light synthesizer part featured on the end. On the refrains of the song, the melody becomes a brighter and more major chorded one-with the strings leading back into the choruses. A slippery,pitch bent synthesizer joins the mix just as the song begins to fade out on its final choruses.
“Love Will Find A Way” is, as my friend Henrique pointed out, a quiet storm groove ballad that also functions as soulful, immaculately produced “sophistifunk” as well. As it turns out, its very mature take on romantic advice dovetails very well into another hit song (and one of my personal favorites from Lionel’s solo career) called “Love Will Conquer All” from his next album-1986’s Dancing On The Ceiling. Same goes for the music of the song as well. Lionel Richie’s solo music, despite its success, has never been based in funk. But “Love Will Find A Way” does bring out that very functional middle ground.