Lionel Richie

When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.

Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.

By growing up in Alabama, I had a melting pot of the whole pie: R&B, gospel, country.

It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.

People, as critical as it looks, we're OK. We are in control, whether we feel it or not.

My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry.

So much of my career has been about saying things the way people say them, using melodies not that I can sing but that the people can sing.

Lionel Richie, love song, OK, thank you very much, good-bye. And all of a sudden I realized that, in my career, what has made my career has always been the surprises.

I find myself going out on the road to get my confidence back, because I lose it at home.

I always like to challenge myself. I never want to be put into a box.

I am a country boy and proud of it.

Greatness comes from fear. Fear can either shut us down and we go home, or we fight through it.