Lionel Richie counts Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters among his celebrity pals: He appeared in the band’s horror movie Studio 666, and Grohl performed with Lionel when the “Hello” singer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But it turns out there’s an even harder-rocking band that wanted to collaborate with Lionel.
It seems chart-topping heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold reached out to Lionel to sing on their new album, Life Is But a Dream… . Speaking with the Nik Nocturnal Podcast, Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows revealed they reached out to Richie to sing on the track “Beautiful Morning.”
Specifically, they wanted him to sing during the part of the song where the brutal, heavy metal portion ends, and a mellow, Beach Boys-like tune starts, with the lyrics, “It’s a beautiful morning/ it’s a beautiful day/ everybody is smiling/ In a beautiful way.”
“We were talking to Lionel Richie about doing the vocal part there, forever,” Shadows shared. “At the end of the day, he got too busy with America’s Got Talent or whatever.”
We assume Shadows meant ABC’s American Idol, for which Lionel has been a judge since 2018.
“It would’ve been so good,” Shadows says of the missed collaboration. “Everybody would’ve been like, ‘What?"”
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