"My job is very simple! I'm here to play the hits! All…Night…Long!"
Lionel Richie shouts these words early in
Hello from Las Vegas, not as a way of introducing his smash hit from 1983, but as an explanation for the revue the audience is about to experience. Whether that audience was at his 2018 Planet Hollywood residency or at home, they're ready to hear the hits and nothing but hits, which are precisely what
Richie delivers in this career-spanning concert. He dips into the
Commodores' songbook, both for the funky "Fancy Dancer" and a medley anchored by "Brick House"; he incorporates "We Are the World" into his rousing closer; and he offers up every ballad and dance-pop hit that made him a superstar in the 1980s.
Richie's voice is a bit ragged, a flaw that's balanced by super-splashy arrangements that are designed for a Vegas stage. Stripped of the visuals, it's a little easy to notice the slight deficiencies in
Richie's singing and the slickness of the arrangements, but if you don't listen too closely,
Hello from Las Vegas will do what it intends to do: it will entertain. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine