Lionel Richie makes unusual admission about Michael Jackson’s poor hygiene
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Lionel Richie has opened up about Michael Jackson’s bad hygiene in his new memoir.
Richie, who is best known for crooning the smoothest love songs, was good friends with Jackson in the early days of his solo career.
However, he’s now revealed what the King of Pop’s hygiene was like, and it apparently wasn’t pretty.
In his new book, Truly, the ‘Endless Love’ singer shared a lot of unknown details about his own life, love, and controversies, and now he’s spilling details on the late pop star, too.
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Within the pages, he claimed that the ‘Beat it’ singer was ‘smelly’, and that he had some habits that made him intervene at some points.
Describing Jackson's daily life as 'eccentric', Richie said that he and music producer Quincy Jones, who produced three of the late singer's albums, would even poke fun at him, nicknaming him 'Smelly'.
However, it wasn’t in bad taste, as Jackson too would find humour in the name. Richie shared that the singer at times didn’t realise that he hadn’t washed his clothes in days, leading them to smell awful.
He wrote: “Michael would laugh, too, realising that he was oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t changed or washed his clothes for a couple of days or so. We all have our quirks.”
He further revealed that Jackson would usually wear ‘elaborate costumes made for him by his stylists,' and whenever the musician visited Richie, he would be wearing a simpler outfit - jeans and a T-shirt.
"And the jeans were either falling off him or too short to even be jeans and, well, smelly.” Richie continued.
When Richie asked him about the state of his jeans, apparently Jackson said to him: “Lionel, I walked by a store in the Valley. The owner came out and gave me a free pair.”
So, he never stopped wearing them.
Calling it a 'souvenir,’ Richie wrote: “He just got into the habit of wearing the same pants until they were unwearable.”
Once, he bought Jackson a pair of jeans and clean underwear and suggested he change and shower because of his smell.
Thankful, the 'Thriller' singer agreed, but left his garments on the floor for Richie to stumble upon.
“I drove him home, on his back streets, and he was sweet and thankful,” he claimed, adding: “As soon as I walked back into my house, I passed by the living room and noticed that there on the carpet was the pair of Michael Jackson’s underwear and his old ratty jeans. Just lying there like roadkill.
“What do I do but laugh? MJ was here.”
But this isn’t the only thing Richie talked about in his book, as the singer also disclosed the moment that was heartbreaking between him and his ex-wife, Brenda Harvey, after she caught him having an affair with his second ex-wife.