Lionel Richie Tribute Sees Demi Lovato And Others Take To The Stage At The Grammys
Last night’s 2016 Grammy Awards saw a number of stars take to the stage to perform their biggest hits of the past year. However, perhaps the most interesting of those performances came when several stars, including Demi Lovato, took to the stage to pay tribute to Lionel Richie. The 66-year-old singer was moved to tears by the tribute, which also included big names in the music business: John Legend, Meghan Trainor, and Luke Bryan.
Some of Lionel Richie’s biggest hits were celebrated during the 2016 Grammy awards, including “Easy”, “Penny Lover,” and, of course, “All Night Long.” Lovato herself used her segment in the performance to sing Adele’s “Hello,” which as you may already be aware is in reference to Lionel Richie’s recent reaction. That reference heralds back to the release of Adele’s most recent album, with several images appearing online showing both Adele and Lionel speaking on the phone to each other in their respective music videos. With that taken into consideration, it surely would have been nice to see Adele make an appearance during the tribute, but Lovato definitely gave a stellar performance.
Funny moments aside, the entire performance was an incredibly touching tribute to Lionel Richie’s career, which spans over four decades. It’s easy to see why Richie was quickly overcome with emotion during the performance before taking to the stage for himself. Lionel Richie finished the tribute with his own performance of “All Night Long,” at which point the audience were on their feet joining the iconic performer in arguably his most iconic tune.
In terms of the awards themselves, the 2016 Grammys saw Lionel Richie named MusiCares Person of the Year in accordance with his contribution to the music industry as a whole. Lionel Richie is known for having won big at the awards four times in the past.
The 2016 Grammy Awards were, of course, all about honoring some of the biggest names in music right now, with the likes of Taylor Swift taking away Album of the Year for 1989, while British vocal talent Ed Sheeran picked up Song of the Year for his “Thinking Out Loud.” With so much young talent winning big and various performances of today’s pop hits, the aforementioned Lionel Richie tribute offered something of a well-needed throwback for those watching in the audience and at home. That being said, whether many increasingly younger Grammys viewers actually caught on to the Lionel Richie reference remains to be seen.
Wow. What a night!! Thank you @LionelRichie.. You deserved every bit of tonight & Saturday night as well. ? #Grammys pic.twitter.com/ljj4hdd8YP
— Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) February 16, 2016
In all, it was nice to see Lionel Richie’s contribution to society honored as part of 2016’s Grammy Awards. The Alabama-born singer-songwriter made his debut back in 1982 and has since been one of the biggest names on both the domestic and international music scene. Lionel Richie has sold over 100 million records worldwide, which firmly places him as one of the best-selling artists of all time. That’s a title many of the stars who took part in the aforementioned tribute can only dream of. We’d imagine that they were keen to grab some advice from Richie backstage.
The 58th Annual Gammy Awards took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, and were hosted by LL Cool J. Along with the aforementioned tribute to Lionel Richie, the show also saw stars take to the stage in order to pay tribute to David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Lemmy, and other big names in the music industry. The tribute performances that took place at this year’s Grammy Awards were definitely signature to the event as a whole. So much so that the 2016 Grammy Awards were as much about the music of times gone by as they were current music. So many stars coming together to pay tribute to Lionel Richie is a testament to that.
[Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images]
