Lionel Richie – Hello

“Hello” – single by Lionel Richie from the album Can’t Slow Down. B-side: “You Mean More to Me”
Released on February 13, 1984.

Charted: No.1 in US and No.1 in UK.

Recorded at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, this was the second #1 song from Richie’s second solo album after leaving the Commodores. Can’t Slow Down won the 1984 Grammy for Album of the Year, and is the biggest-selling album in the history of Motown Records.

When he was young, Richie watched beautiful women walk past but was too shy to talk to them. He thought to himself, “Hello, is it me you’re looking for.” Years later he started to write a song using the phrase but got stuck and gave up, but his record producer liked the line and urged him to finish it.

Richie had this song written for his first solo album, but he left it off. His wife Brenda loved the song, and insisted he include it on his second album, Can’t Slow Down.

The music video for “Hello”, directed by Bob Giraldi, features the story of Richie as a theater and acting teacher having a seemingly unrequited love for a blind student (Laura Carrington) until he discovers she shares the feeling as demonstrated by the discovery that she is sculpting a likeness of his head in clay.

The video was voted the worst music video of all time in a poll of 8,000 music fans by UK TV music channel The Box, but Giraldi, who also directed Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” stands by it. He’s quoted in the book I Want My MTV as saying, “I came up with the idea of a blind girl and Lionel as a teacher. ‘Hello’ is one of the top videos ever.” Giraldi adds that Richie was concerned that the bust didn’t look like him, until Giraldi pointed out that the girl making it was supposed to be blind.

The girl who played the blind sculptress in the video was a 26-year-old fully sighted aspiring actress named Laura Carrington. She played Dr. Simone Ravelle Hardy #1 on General Hospital in the late 1980s.