Avenged Sevenfold Wanted Lionel Richie To Feature On Their New Album

Avenged Sevenfold released their eighth studio album, Life Is But A Dream… on Friday, and thanks to vocalist M Shadows, we’re finding out new things about the album every day.

Not only has he aimed to “find the meaning of life” or admitted trying out hallucinogens, but in a new interview with YouTuber Nik Nocturnal, Shadows has shared that he wanted a special guest to feature on their new album.

At the mid-way point of Avenged Sevenfold’s divisive, experimental new record is Beautiful Morning, and on that track, Shadows said that the band wanted Lionel Richie’s signature vocal along with his own.

On Beautiful Morning’s bridge, which goes “It’s a beautiful morning / It’s a beautiful day / Everybody is smiling in a beautiful way,” Shadows revealed that the band wanted Richie’s vocals there. “We were talking to Lionel Richie about doing the vocal part there… forever,” Shadows told Nocturnal, as transcribed by Kerrang!

He added, “And at the end of the day he got too busy with America’s Got Talent or whatever, but he was gonna sing that, ‘It’s a beautiful morning / It’s a beautiful day.’ It would have been so good, and everyone would have been like, ‘What?!’” You can head to 35:40 in the video below for the Lionel Richie chat.

While Shadows mentioned Richie working on America’s Got Talent, that’s actually the wrong show – Lionel Richie is a judge on American Idol alongside pop star Katy Perry and country music phenomenon Luke Bryan.

Avenged Sevenfold announced Life Is But A Dream… in March and also unveiled the wacky, Black Sabbath-influenced single, Nobody.

Nobody was the band’s first new song since the previously unreleased number from the Hail To The King sessions, Set Me Free, in 2020.

A press release about new music reads, “Avenged Sevenfold's new album, Life Is But A Dream, is best served as a whole and consumed en masse to truly appreciate its musical breadth and sonic depth (per Forbes). 

“Written and recorded over the span of 4 years, it was produced by Joe Barresi and Avenged Sevenfold in Los Angeles and mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, PA. 

"The album is a journey through an existential crisis; a very personal exploration into the meaning, purpose and value of human existence with the anxiety of death always looming.”

You can listen to the album here.