Louder Than Words

Louder Than Words is the fourth studio album by American singer Lionel Richie. It was released by Mercury Records on April 16, 1996, in the United States. The album marked Richie's debut with the record label as well as his first album of new material in 10 years after a longer hiatus during which he went through a much-publicized divorce from his first wife Brenda Harvey and the loss of his father and a close friend. Apart from chief producer James Anthony Carmichael, the singer worked with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Babyface and David Foster on Louder Than Words. Upon release, the album earned generally mixed to positive review from music critics, many of whom praised Richie's vocal performances and the ballads on the album but found the overall material old-fashioned. Commercially, Louder Than Words failed to reprise the success of Richies's previous multi-platinum studio albums Can't Slow Down (1983) and Dancing on the Ceiling (1986), though it entered the top thirty on the majority of the album charts it appeared on, going gold in France and the US and silver in the United Kingdom. Background Following years of intense touring and recording, Richie was suffering from burnout symptoms by March 1986. While he only intended to take a year off, his father, Lionel Richie Sr., fell ill before dying in 1990. After his death, Richie struggled with what he described as "a massive depression". At the same time, he was divorcing from his first wife Brenda Harvey after nearly two decades of marriage. Right after that, amid the release of his first compilation album Back to Front (1992) and the pre-production of a new studio album, his best friend informed Richie that he was dying from AIDS-related causes. It was not until his passing, that Richie felt ready to produce new music. Welcoming his second child, son Miles, with his second wife Diane Alexander in May 1994 eventually helped jumpstarting a return to recording. In a 2018 interview with People magazine, Richie commented: "They didn’t know what the hell I did for a living so I thought at that particular point, let’s go back and prove to the kids what I do. And so that was the incentive. I realized, this is what I should be doing." Critical reception