Lionel Richie Launches His Easy Like Sunday Morning Fragrance — and Shares His Easy Sunday Routine (Exclusive)

Lionel Richie rarely stands still. 

“I'm the kid who keeps saying, What's next?’" he tells PEOPLE exclusively one afternoon in July. 

So, what is next for the music icon? The launch of his second fragrance, Easy Like Sunday Morning by Lionel Richie. 

It’s a fitting follow to the 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of fame inductee’s first fragrance, Hello, which debuted in 2019. Like its predecessor, this is inspired by one of his mega hits. 

“I was very successful when I put out Hello,” the Grammy-winning artist, 74, says. “[What] I didn't realize at that time was I was testing the water to see exactly what the vibe was going to be,” adds Richie of entering a new creative space. 

The reception was overwhelmingly positive, with the scent picking up a Fragrance Foundation nomination for the Fragrance of the Year: Popular category. 

“That was my calling card to say, "OK, we need to do something else."

Enter: Easy Like Sunday Morning by Lionel Richie, inspired by the former Commodores frontman's feel-good song “Easy.”

“I just thought it would be great to have an Easy Like Sunday Morning fragrance. It's just the perfect segue as far as I'm concerned,” says the singer-songwriter. “I’m from the South, Tuskegee all the way. You want something to take you to that place of calm and bliss. Something where even if it's a Tuesday, you want to be easy like Sunday morning.”

Richie admits it took him “a minute” to find a scent that evoked those feelings.

“It's like with the music business. You want to know what that mood is for a song three seconds into it. That’s what fragrance has to do as well. When you put this on, it has to make you feel the way you want to feel about yourself.”

“But, I'm a songwriter, and what I didn't realize was in music, there's only 12 notes. In the fragrance world, there's 90 billion combinations you can put together. And then that's when I became a complete Gemini. Because if you give a Gemini too many choices, I almost drove myself crazy, but I was also in heaven. I mean, once I realized the adjustments I could make, that made me really satisfied. It's the perfect creation.”

A self-described “hopeless horticulturalist” with gardens at his Alabama and L.A. homes, Richie really leaned into the transportive quality of scent. The fragrance, available on HSN.com in a 3.4 oz bottle, travel-friendly rollerball and duo combining both options, opens with notes of strawberry, grapefruit and almond blossom. 

It was important to Richie to create an all-gender scent that resonated with any fan. “It was ‘OK guys, let's make this so anybody can wear this and not feel like they're overpowering the world.’”

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While the superstar calls his fragrance Hello “a greeter,” he says Easy Like Sunday Morning, in contrast, hits a more “nostalgic” note.

“If it’s morning and I am really about to take on the world, Hello says, ‘I want to meet you. I'm coming out.’ It's upbeat. It's uplifting. You feel it. I'm feeling myself and I'm feeling everybody in the room.”

“[With this], I'm really not trying to impress the room, I'm just trying to make sure I go to my peace. I tell people every day, ‘If you can be easy like Sunday morning on a Thursday afternoon, you're doing really great.’ Because a lot of times you're overwhelmed. I've been that way many times where you've got so many people in your face and you cannot get away. But if I have this fragrance, it's kind of sending me in that direction. It reminds me of where my center is.”

With Easy, Richie says he had help from daughters Nicole Richie and Sofia Richie Grainge. 

“You call them my girls, I call them my critics. What's the line you have all kids say to their parents? ‘Mom and dad, don't embarrass me.’” So yes, I ran it by my crack team of noses. And it's really kind of humbling, because when you start off as a parent, you think you're going to guide them. And towards the second half of your life, they're making decisions, helping you figure out stuff.”

He continues, “Even though I wrote the songs, this is new for me. And fragrance, I must admit, the ladies in my family have down to a science.”

What Richie has down to a science is his easy Sunday morning routine. “There's not a lot of movement, I'll tell you that. It's really probably the most relaxed part of my whole week, because I make it a point to stroll the garden. And I do my zen work, which for me is, there's a lot of hedges in my backyard and somebody needs to tend to that hedge right over there. So I carry my clippers with me in my little case, and I clip that little limb that needs to be clipped and that little branch needs to be clipped.”

Richie, who’s gearing up for 50 shows in 2023, starting with the Sing a Song All Night Long tour with Earth Wind & Fire in August, adds that Sunday is his day to himself.

“So much of my [other] days are about charging other people, giving. Sunday is that moment when I can talk to me. Because what you get in my world is, what is that one line? ‘If I were you, I would do this, Lionel.’ And you have to remember, OK, you're not me. So me and God, we walk in the garden. And I just make sure that we're on the same page before Monday morning comes.”