Lionel Richie has sold millions of records to people who couldn't be less interested in what the critics think of them. His current album, Just For You, is his most succesful in two decades; the cover shows him miraculously immune to ageing.

Backed by a gang of session men from central casting - the crazy saxophonist, the boyish lead guitarist feeling every hackneyed note of his solos in a pantomime of sincerity - Richie bounds manfully onstage to a fanfare of lumbering power chords. Apart from a handful of songs that date back to Richie's time with the Commodores, played with a stripped-down group at the front of the stage, the recent material is indistinguishable from his sizable arsenal of hits. Everything is mired in a ghastly, thunderous AOR for which it is forever the mid-to-late 1980s.

Richie himself spends so much time grinning and spotting particularly effervescent crowd members, he rarely makes it to the end of a line without breaking off in wonder at just what an incredible audience we are, exhorting fans to sing and clap along. After a while, you long for him to progress past his slick default setting and actually attempt to invest a performance with some feeling. But instead of the crisis, rapture and pain integral to real soul and the palpable heat of funk, these songs are frequently dizzying confections of every hollow lyrical and musical cliche imaginable. Relentless as any Vegas routine, Richie's loverman persona doesn't touch the sides.

· At Birmingham NIA on October 22 and 23. Box office: 0870 7300196. Then touring.