London, Mar 31 (IANS): Singer Lionel Richie can't record a song unless he's wearing a beanie or tennis hat.

The singer is superstitious when it comes to singing and wears one of his favourite hats when he records.

"I can't record a song unless I have a special hat on my head. That's probably the strangest thing about me. I have my charmed hats that I have to have before I can record. It's either a beanie or it's a tennis hat. We all have our things," contactmusic.com quoted him as saying.

The 62-year-old went from being sharp dressed and cool in the 1970s with "The Commodores" to having a slightly less fashionable image in the 1980s, but he claims he was happy about that.

"'Cool' and 'hip' were the two words I wanted to stay away from. I was looking more for something like 'standard', which is considered a bad word. The thing that scared me about being cool was it meant that I was cool today. And tomorrow I'm uncool," he added.