Lionel Richie turns to touring as music biz evolves

Aloha Stadium has been the trendy venue for concerts over the past few months, but it’s not for everyone, as some artists require things the Halawa facility just can’t provide.

For example, how can you book a roofless venue when you plan to have your fans … “Dancing on the Ceiling”?

And so it makes sense that pop music legend Lionel Richie is booked for two shows this weekend at Blaisdell Arena, where his plan is surely to have his audience singing and dancing throughout the evening to that hit and many more of the dozens he scored both as a solo artist and before that with the 1970s funk/soul outfit the Commodores.

YES, THERE will be hits, and unlike many acts with huge catalogs, there will be only hits. No “here’s something from the new album” — and with it no obvious time to make a restroom run — because Richie hasn’t released an album of new songs in nearly a decade, thanks to the way the music business has evolved.

In the 1980s and 1990s, it was routine for albums to sell 5 million copies or more. The top-selling album of 2018 was the soundtrack to the film “The Greatest Showman,” which moved fewer than 1.5 million copies (with streams giving it the equivalent of about another million in sales).

“When I get to a show, I can’t play all the damn songs I have already!” Richie told Variety last year. (The Star-Advertiser’s request for an interview with Richie was declined.) “So to rush a brand new song is not exactly on my front burner. But also, it’s a very unfair business now for songwriters.

“Until we actually start paying writers again, then there’s really no rush for me to do another album, because I could never get paid back for it. … At the end of recording (an) album, I owe the record company. If you can never recoup, what’s that all about? So at some point I realized, ‘I think I’ll just go and tour, and find another route.’ That’s where I’ve been for a while.”

So Richie has adjusted, and there apparently will be no new songs from an all-time great pop songsmith, who besides his own array of No. 1 hits — “All Night Long (All Night),” “Hello” and the Diana Ross duet “Endless Love” among five — has penned chart-toppers with the Commodores — “Three Times a Lady” and “Still” — and for others, including Kenny Rogers’ “Lady” and USA for Africa’s “We Are the World,” the 1985 all-star benefit single for famine relief that Richie cowrote with Michael Jackson and sang leadoff on.

The Commodores’ sound evolved from funkier fare such as the instrumental “Machine Gun” and “Slippery When Wet” to Richie-sung ballads such as the above No. 1 singles and “Sail On.” The torch was passed on the band’s eponymous 1977 disc, which featured two top-five hits: the funk classic “Brick House” (with vocals by Walter Orange) and the adult-contemporary staple “Easy.”

When Richie struck out on his own in 1982, the success of the band’s slightly soulful love songs laid a template. He perfected his pop sheen and extended it to up-tempo numbers such as “You Are,” “All Night Long” and “Dancing on the Ceiling,” opting for broader pop rather than the funkier sound his former band started with.

The results were tough to argue with — Richie’s first 13 solo singles reached the top 10, which helped him rack up nine consecutive years with a No. 1 hit as a writer. Line them all up and you have a good chunk of the soundtrack of the life of pretty much any American over the age of 40.

Even for those who don’t find his music to be their cup of tea, the presence was inescapable.

“Truly” and the Commodores’ “Just to Be Close to You” themed many a prom. “All Night Long” and “Endless Love” were wedding standards for decades. “Sail On,” also with the Commodores, helped ease breakups. And “We Are the World” … well, “We Are the World” was everywhere in 1985.

Richie’s music is also heard around the world. He played the globally broadcast closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Iraqi civilians — he has a large following in the Middle East — reportedly blasted “All Night Long” in Baghdad when U.S. tanks rolled through in the 2003 invasion.

OTHER DIVERSIONS keep Richie busy these days, as he approaches 70, despite his break with recording new music.

Besides an active touring schedule, last year he joined the reboot of “American Idol” as it hopped from Fox to ABC. He and his fellow judges — pop hit-maker Katy Perry and country star Luke Bryan, who like Richie are returning for their second seasons — are in Honolulu his month to film a showcase round for the upcoming season, along with longtime host Ryan Seacrest and mentor Bobby Bones. The singing competition is scheduled to debut on March 3.

The show gives Richie a chance to share the lessons he’s learned across 50 years in the music business with artists just trying to get their break, and to serve as a mentor to some.

But it’s not just the young contestants who make the veteran Richie feel like “the adult in the room,” as he has about 30 years on Bryan and Perry.

“I find it hilarious, some of the things Katy and Luke say that I would never say on national television,” Richie told Variety in another story last year. “I’m a little bit more guarded on what I’m saying. I think their job is to see if they can get me to faint before the show is over.”

While Richie has proved a true survivor in the music industry, what he didn’t count on was that he’d wind up being a literal survivor of the ’80s pop scene. He sang at Jackson’s funeral in 2009 and has since seen many of his contemporaries die, including a few who were much younger than him: Whitney Houston, Prince and George Michael.

“Aretha (Franklin) was the one that kinda — Aretha, Prince, B.B. King, Michael. You know, Natalie (Cole), Glenn Frey. Those are the ones that kind of rattled the cage,” Richie told GQ last year. “Aretha was one of the pillars of the whole building, you know? … But my plan, my plot, was to hang out with the younger ones, so that when the older ones started dying, you’d be able to hang out with Michael and Prince and Whitney — and then all of a sudden, you realize: ‘Wait, I think I just lost my plan.’”