(audience clapping)
- So, please let us give a heartfelt ovation
to the 2022 Library of Congress
Gershwin Prize for Popular Song honoree Lionel Richie.
(crowd clapping and cheering)
(crowd cheering)
- Now, this is absolutely outrageous.
(crowd laughing)
This is about as surreal.
(crowd laughing)
You see, I made a promise this time
that would take my time,
take in the moment,
so that I won't have to go back
to the seat and go, "Did I do it?"
This is an amazing honor.
As my grandmother would say,
"This is about as high cotton as you ever gonna get."
(crowd laughing)
(Lionel laughing)
(crowd clapping)
There are times in a person's life,
when the gravity of what happens along the way
of your journey happens to culminate
to one particular place.
From a small town guy from Tuskegee, Alabama
(crowd cheering)
to a group called the Commodores
(crowd cheering)
and to now be standing in front of the members of Congress
and the Library of Congress and the Gershwin award.
Do you understand what that, what I'm saying here?
I mean, that's ridiculous.
Let me just quote a statement here.
My dad said me years ago, "It would be best
that you play with this band for just a little while
and then continue on with your studies
because I want you to be able to make sure you have a job."
(crowd laughing)
He gave me some advice
and then realizing that I was not going
to leave the band quite as soon as possible,
he came back and put a little more pressure on me.
He said, "Son, I need you to focus.
It is time for you to let that old band alone
and I want you to now move on with your studies."
And then success happened
and Barbara Walters was interviewing my father
and my dad said,
"It is a job of every parent to stand firmly
behind the child and support them in their endeavors."
(crowd cheering)
That brother was lying through his teeth.
(crowd laughing)
But I realized at that point
that I had done something significant.
I had a chance to say to my parents,
"I told you so."
(crowd laughing)
Now tonight, let me just say that this has been a journey,
an amazing journey that started out
with not really having an idea
of what was going to happen in the next 40 years of my life
but along the way, I've got some endearing advice.
Henry Mancini, Sammy Cahn, Quincy Jones, Ray Charles,
the old school.
And they said to me, "Son just lean forward,
and if God is humming to you,
you'll be the luckiest guy on the planet."
Well, God did hum to me.
And what's happening,
(crowd clapping)
I'm celebrating tonight a collaboration of me and God
because we made a pact
or I made pact to him, her, them, or they.
(crowd clapping)
I wanna make sure that's correct.
I made a pact that if you allow me to be a lyricist
and to write words that touch people, I will make sure
that I get the message that love, love is the only answer
to everything we are doing.
(crowd clapping)
I said it last night.
I said it last night and I'll say it tonight.
I traveled the world
and all people really want me to say is I love you.
All they want to hear is I love you.
They all have mothers.
They all have fathers.
They all have sisters and brothers and family.
We're all one big family.
There's no place else to go.
There's no place else that we live.
So as I travel around the world
I realize we're all the same.
We may live in different places,
but these songs are as popular
on the other side of the world, as they are here in DC.
I love you is forever
the only words that the world wants to hear
and the day we finally realize
that we're a family and not a tribe.
We're a family and not a party.
We're a family.
The day that happens
we will clearly be united together as one.
Thank you very much.
(crowd clapping and cheering)
Thank you!
(crowd clapping)
(easy music)