”Hello” is a song by Lionel Richie. Taken as the third single from Richie’s multi-platinum album Can’t Slow Down, the song was released in 1984 and reached number one on three Billboard music charts: the pop chart (for two weeks), the R&B chart (for three weeks), and the adult contemporary chart (for six weeks). The song also went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart. It is considered by many as Richie’s signature song. The tune of the second verse of the song, beginning with the words: “I can see it in your eyes”, is very similar to the second verse of another song, with minor note changes, that was written much earlier by a Ukrainian musician Volodymyr Ivasyuk in 1968 and is called “Chervona Ruta”. The song is particularly memorable for the line “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”. In an interview broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s Top 100 Number One Hits, Richie said he had been thanked by a large number of normally tongue-tied men who had proposed marriage after a slow dance to the song. Arguably the music video attracted more attention than the song, for its story of Richie’s character (a fine arts teacher) having a seemingly unrequited love for a blind art student (played by Laura Carrington, an actress who is not blind) until he discovers she shares the feeling as demonstrated by the discovery that she is sculpting a likeness of his head (which was actually created by a professional sculptor who never met Lionel). The video has been parodied a number of times including …