lionel richie performed “Jesus Is Love” with Luke Bryan during “Songs of Faith” night on American Idol, then reflected on why he still returns to the song. He said the performance came at a moment when faith and prayer still feel necessary.
Richie said, “We are in need of prayer. We are in need of power.” He also said the song keeps finding new relevance as years pass, linking that view to a career that has stretched across five decades.
Richie And Luke Bryan
Richie sang the 1980 Commodores release with Bryan on the televised faith-themed night, bringing one of his best-known spiritual songs back into a live broadcast setting. He said, “The irony of this is that every time I write a song, it seems to be needed more as life goes on. We keep repeating the same stupidity. Every generation, we do the same thing, and here we are again, in need of that.”
The song has followed Richie through different parts of his career. He co-wrote “We Are the World” with Michael Jackson in 1985, and he said someone recently told him, “You need to write another ‘We Are the World,’” to which he replied, “Just play it again.”
Michael Jackson Funeral
Richie said the last time he sang “Jesus Is Love” was at Michael’s funeral, when Mother Katherine asked him to perform it. He also performed the song at Jackson’s 2009 memorial service, tying the song to a public moment that carried far beyond his own catalog.
That memory sits alongside the way Richie describes faith in his life. He said faith has always guided his career and that he felt an anointing from God from a young age, adding, “If someone said to me years ago, back in the '70s, ‘You need to get turned on to God,’ I said, ‘I've been turned on forever. What are you talking about?’ In other words, it's not a fad. It's a feeling, it's a presence.”
Richie On Faith
Richie grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama, and said, “God has been hijacked so many times.” At 76, he is still framing the song as a message that applies beyond one performance, especially when he says, “And it’s the same with ‘Jesus Is Love.’ The message is the same.”
For viewers who watched the performance, the immediate takeaway was not a new release or a promotion cycle. It was Richie placing a five-decade song back into a national television moment and explaining, in his own words, why he believes its message still lands now.
