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Lionel Richie acquired one of many most prestigious honors on the 2022 American Music Awards: the icon award. Every yr, the noble honor is handed out to artists whose “physique of labor has marked a worldwide affect over the music business,” based on an AMAs press launch. Considering that Richie accumulating the award now makes him the one artist in American Music Awards historical past to be featured on the stage each decade since its 1974 inception, it positive appears he deserves the accolade.
The icon award makes 18 AMAs wins for Richie and he could not be extra grateful. “I’m immensely grateful for a profession that has taken me to locations I by no means imagined that I’d go, from arenas worldwide to studio units to the AMA stage,” he mentioned in a press launch. “I can recall one of many first instances I obtained to carry out on the AMAs. It was to sing ‘We Are the World’ among the many most iconic musicians of my technology, so it’s surreal to be receiving this recognition 36 years later.”
After his good buddy Smokey Robinson offered him with the icon award Sunday night time, Richie devoted his acceptance speech to his youngsters — daughters Sofia, 24, and Nicole, 41, and son Miles Richie, 28 — saying, “I wish to thank my youngsters and the moms of my youngsters for preserving my youngsters collectively.” He went on to thank his buddies who’ve additionally supported his long-standing profession.
The four-time Grammy winner has bought over 125 million albums all through his profession, so there have been loads of songs to select from when Stevie Wonder, Ari Lennox, and Charlie Puth graced the stage Sunday night time to pay tribute to the musical legend. Wonder and Puth took turns performing riffs of a few of Richie’s most iconic hits like “Three Times a Lady,” “Easy,” “All Night Long (All Night),” “Say You, Say Me,” and “Brick House” by the Commodores. Lennox, Robinson, Muni Long, Jimmie Allen, Yola, Melissa Etheridge, and Dustin Lynch — additionally joined by Richie — then appeared to sing his world charity hit “We Are the World.”
Watch Richie’s acceptance speech and see glimpses of his tribute forward.