‘Truly,’ Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie — that guy has it all figured out. He gives a tour of his long life in the music biz in his gigantic memoir Truly — nearly 500 pages — but he’s a great raconteur because he’s totally devoid of bitterness. He’s got no scores to settle, no axes to grind; he’s just got millions of funny stories about practically everybody he met along the way, with plenty of self-deprecating humor. He’s a humble Tennessee college kid who rises up in the Sixties with the Motown funk band the Commodores, then graduates to solo stardom with ballads like “Hello” (which he calls “the corniest shit ever”), writes “We Are the World” with Michael Jackson, and dominates Eighties radio. “How could you not be sick of him already?” he asks in the third person. “In fact, I was sick of me.” But he’s all charm. —Rob Sheffield