Lionel Richie topped the pop and R&B charts in 1987 with “All Night Long.” “It was the first time I’ve ever written a song where I didn’t have a hook. It took me months to find one,” Richie told the New York Post.
“If the song is called ‘Easy,’ you write ‘easy’ first. Then you work from there. I wrote everything—’Well my friend, the time has come,’ ‘Fiesta, forever’—and I still didn’t have a hook.”
Richie’s problem was solved months later when dining with a friend. “I was leaving his house and I said, ‘I’m going back to work all night long.’ Then I said, ‘Wait a minute. “All Night Long.”’
“He looked at me like I was nuts. Sometimes, by not thinking, you find exactly what you want.”
The song is famous for its African-sounding lyrics like “Tam bo li de say de moi ya, Hey Jambo Jumbo,” which Richie has called “a wonderful joke.”
“I needed some words in Swahili or African, something that said ‘infectious partying,’” Richie said in Rolling Stone. “I called my dear friend from Jamaica, Dr. Lloyd Greig, and said, ‘What does Bob Marley mean when he sings Huah jaa huah jeebee goo?’
“He said, ‘That means absolutely nothing, man. That means nothing.’ So I called some friends at the UN. I told them what I needed. They said, ‘Lionel, there are 101 African dialects.’ I said, ‘Wait, does one tribe not know what the other is saying?’ And he says, ‘Absolutely.’
“After that, I hung up the phone and just made it up. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve traveled the world and people go, ‘Oh my God, Lionel, the fact you put mambo with mumbo jumbo . . .’ They’re telling me what it means and I don’t want to tell them it doesn’t mean anything to me!”
