Lionel Richie -- Love Will Find a Way

 

With "Love Will Conquer All" and "Love Will Find a Way", I swear that singer-songwriter Lionel Richie could have opted to become one of America's most reassuring therapists. Incidentally, I have already brought the 80s crooner onto KKP through a ROY article on the former song from 1986 which I dearly loved and listened to as a high school kid back then.

But then I stumbled across his earlier "Love Will Find a Way" which is a track on his Grammy-winning October 1983 album "Can't Slow Down" and fell in love with this Quiet Storm ballad, too. This album certainly didn't slow down, not only winning Album of the Year but sprouting five hit singles, not one of which is "Love Will Find a Way" and strangely enough, it's the song that is my favourite out of all of the tracks (I finally did get my own copy of the album) and it's my favourite Richie song, period. Created by Richie and Greg Phillinganes (a name that I will always pay attention to), it may go on a bit long at over 6 minutes, but man, it is one of the grooviest soul songs about trying to get out of the doldrums. Phillinganes himself is on the keyboards and Nathan East is on bass so they are the groove masters, and I had no idea that singer Richard Marx was helping out on backing vocals. This is the type of tune that you want to hear at night with some sherry and maybe that significant other.

Because "Love Will Find a Way" wasn't ever released as its own single, it didn't get onto the radio all that much but when it did, I quickly heard its merits. It wasn't easy at first because I had the bad luck of missing out on the DJ announcing its title but when I finally figured it out, I made sure that the title stayed within long and short-term memories.

So what was being released as singles in October 1983?

Chiemi Hori -- Yuugure Kibun （夕暮れ気分）

Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe -- Asphalt Lady

Seiko Matsuda -- Hitomi wa Diamond （瞳はダイアモンド）