Songoftheday 5/10/13 - The heart of the city street was beating, lights from the neons turned the dark to day...

Lionel Richie - "Running With The Night"
from the album Can't Slow Down (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is by Lionel Richie, who released the biggest album of his career in 1983 with the 10+ million selling Can't Slow Down. After going to #1 on the pop chart with the first single, the festive "All Night Long (All Night)", Richie followed it with a song clearly meant to be his answer to Michael Jackson's rock-inflected "Beat It". With a more diluted guitar of Toto's Steve Lukather, "Running With The Night", co-written with veteran songstress Cynthia Weil, was as edgy as Lionel was willing to go at that point. Of course a big-concept dance video was filmed, and I sweat that both the "gang leaders" of "Beat It" show up here (definitely the groom in this one)...

"Running..." was another crossover success, reaching the top-10 on the American pop, R&B, and Adult Contemporary charts, and even popping up for a week on the rock radio chart as well. It also made the top-10 in Britain (his fourth under his own name) and the Netherlands.

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In 2007, Rihanna sampled the background melody of the song for her song "Push Up On Me"...

Here's Lionel on tour in 1984 with the track...

When it came time to film a TV special for his countrified Tuskegee album, he enlisted Luke Bryan to sing it...

Up tomorrow: A Southern Rock reflection, by the numbers.