Heavy/Getty Lionel Richie winks at photographers during the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024
Music legend Lionel Richie has so many irons in the fire, from concert tours to his new documentary premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, that it can be hard for the “American Idol” judge to focus sometimes.
But Richie, 74, has grown used to feeling easily distracted, given that it’s a common symptom of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In an interview published on January 18, 2024, the Grammy winner confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter (THR) that he has the condition, admitting that it’s caused some angst among his creative collaborators. But he also thinks the condition, which went undiagnosed for decades, has fueled his success.
Here’s what you need to know:
Lionel Richie Says He Was Totally Distracted During the Writing of ‘We Are The World’
Richie has been in Park City, Utah, for several days to celebrate the premiere of a new documentary he helped produce, “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which debuts on Netflix on January 29. The film documents the making of “We Are The World,” a historic pop single recorded in 1985 by 46 of the biggest names in music at the time, from Michael Jackson to Bruce Springsteen. Sales of the song raised $60 million for famine relief organization USA for Africa, according to American Songwriter.
Jackson and Richie agreed to write the song less than two weeks before the American Music Awards, after which all the celebrities involved would gather to record the song. But, Richie admitted to THR, he and Jackson kept putting off writing the tune.
“I would love to tell you we were focused,” Richie said. “But this was like trying to get two 3-year-olds to sit down and focus. We were all over the place.”
When Richie mentioned “ADD” to THR reporter Rebecca Keegan, she asked, “Do you actually have attention deficit disorder?”
Richie replied, “The answer is yes. And whenever I like to make an excuse for myself, I go, ‘Eh, this is what ADD does.’ Now, it drives everybody else crazy because everyone else is spinning, going, ‘Is Lionel going to deliver this or not?’ But it gives me an excuse to go, ‘Guys, it’ll happen.'”
According to the Child Mind Institute, ADD is an out-of-date term that was medically used until 1987, when the word “hyperactivity” was added to the name — resulting in the condition officially being called ADHD. The institute describes it as “a psychiatric syndrome that includes difficulties with attention and organization of behavior,” which can include inattention, distractability, impulsivity, and poor organization skills.
“Let me explain to you my very sick MO,” Richie told THR, describing how the condition impacts him. “If you give me a whole semester to write a term paper, I will wait till the last five days and write the term paper. So the more it became clear that there’s a cliff at the end of the street, the more focused I got.”
“I’m going to tell you how ADD works and ADHD works,” he continued. “You can’t leave it open-ended. You’ve got to give me a crash point, and then I’m there. I’m all there.”
Lionel Richie Says His Daydreaming Turned Him Into a Songwriter
Richie, who will return in February to “American Idol” for his seventh season as a judge, has said previously that he was an easily distracted child who often got in trouble for daydreaming, but that attention deficit disorders were not known about at the time.
“I am going to give you the secret to my whole upbringing,” he told the Tribune News Service in May 2022. “If I had to use one phrase that I can remember that kind of serves me well for the rest of my life, is, ‘Lionel, would you like to join the rest of the class?’ In other words, I was not in class. I was daydreaming.”
But in the end, he told the outlet, all that daydreaming fueled his gift for songwriting.
“I didn’t realize that daydreaming — that drifting off — was that other place where I write songs,” he explained. “But I didn’t know I was a songwriter. So, I could not keep my mind on what was happening in front of me to save my life.”
“Songwriting was happening (to me) every day,” he continued. “I didn’t realize that the words I was thinking about were actually poetic until I started writing it down … I was writing songs as a kid in the early parts of my life. When I say that, I mean, 15, 16.”
When he received the prestigious Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2022, he told Librarian of
Congress Carla Hayden that, growing up, he was often “living somewhere else in my brain.”
Today, his mind still drifts off, he said, allowing him to “receive” the music and lyrics for his hit songs.
“I receive music,” he told her. “It just comes. What happens when I’m over there (in my mind), I hear wonderful, wonderful phrases of love.”
In 2008, Richie told Gulf News that ADD also made him particularly sensitive.
“This condition means I’m hyper-sensitive and I feel everything,” he said. “The thing about that is it makes for a lousy lawyer but a great songwriter. I seem to be able to be able to put whatever I feel inside into words without really thinking.”