Songwriters are always on the lookout for material. Many great songs have been written by those who can hear in the problems of others close to them the source material for something that will touch a lot of people.
Lionel Richie found such inspiration in the problems a few of his friends were undergoing. He turned their difficult situations into a moving treatise on dealing with separation when he penned and sung the song “Still,” a No. 1 hit for the Commodores in 1979.
Richie on a Roll
The Commodores were, in many ways, a band divided during their ‘70s heyday. On the one hand, they could turn out funky, energetic R&B with the best of them, perhaps most notably on their smash single “Brick House.” But they wisely left room for sentimental balladry, since those types of songs often proved to be commercial catnip.
In Lionel Richie, they had a writer who was expert in the latter type of material. He had already hoisted the band to the top of the pop charts in 1978 with the ballad “Three Times a Lady.” On the 1979 Commodores’ album Midnight Magic, Richie delivered a pair of slow ones that ended up in the Top 10.
After “Sail On” hit No. 4 as the first single, Richie struck again with “Still.” Although happily married at the time, he knew some friends who were struggling with breakups. Richie used their experiences to write “Still,” as he explained at the time in an interview with Dick Clark (as reported by SuperSeventies.com):
“I admired their strength. They decided that marriage was not the thing for them and they were probably destroying what they had in the first place, which was friendship. … They both sat down and said, ‘Listen, we want to be friends, we said some things wrong. Let’s get a divorce and that way (we) can still be in love and still love (each other) as friends.’”
The Meaning of the Lyrics to “Still”
Richie has a way with his ballads of making stream of consciousness connections, and that talent is on display all throughout “Still.” One point leads to the other quite seamlessly, until it adds up to a sweeping finish with a last line that perfectly sums up all that came before. Couple it all with dramatic piano and strings, and it’s no surprise this one took the charts by storm.
The stage is set in the opening lines: Lady, morning’s just a moment away / And I’m without you once again. We know this relationship has crumbled, and at first, this guy is playing the blame game. But then he segues into deep reflection about what’s been lost: So many dreams that flew away / So many words we didn’t say. Amidst the wreckage, he can’t find any remainder of what they’d once been: Where did we go?
Suddenly, he’s seeing that this marriage fell apart through both of their actions: You know we let each other down. As he moves through his emotions, he starts to see things clearly in retrospect, things to which he was blind as they were happening in real time: We played the games that people play / We made our mistakes along the way.
What makes “Still” such a heart-tugger is how Richie shifts the emotional pull subtly in the final moments. The narrator no longer doubts what they meant to each other: Somehow I know deep in my heart / You needed me / ’Cause I needed you so desperately. The final conclusion, all that really matters, is the following: But then most of all / I do love you / Still.
Richie speaks the final word instead of singing it, and that somehow lends more impact to it. With “Still,” Lionel Richie gave the Commodores another Gold-plated weeper, and delivered hard-earned wisdom—borrowed from the experience of friends—about occupying the high ground at the most difficult possible time.
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