Louder Than Words | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | April 16, 1996 | |||
Studio |
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Genre | R&B[1] | |||
Length | 67:05 | |||
Label | Mercury | |||
Producer |
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Lionel Richie chronology | ||||
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Singles from Louder Than Words | ||||
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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.
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