Lionel Richie decided to ''make love to every girl in the world'' when he started out in music.

The 'Hello' singer began touring with funk-soul group the Commodores as a youngster, and revealed they all attempted to bed as many women as possible as they travelled around the world.

He said: ''When the touring [with the Commodores] started we knew we were gonna do a hundred shows in as many cities, maybe more, in a year. So we decided: we're gonna make love to every girl in the world. That was our mission statement.''

The singer, now 65, insisted he kept score of the thousands of women he slept with during the period, which would sometimes be three each day, but revealed it occasionally got too much for him because he still needed the stamina to perform.

He explained: ''We all kept score, yeah. We were college guys, so we liked stats. And when you start out, it's madness: there's one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening. It's great. You're killing it. But all of a sudden you get to the fifth show and you're, like: Everybody get out of my room! You can't do it. I don't care whether you're 19 and sexually possessed - you can't do that and put on high-heeled boots and run across the stage every night.''

However, Lionel - who divorced his second wife Diane Alexander in 2004 - said the pressure of performing and seducing women eventually turned him onto drugs.

He continued: ''That's why drugs became so inviting: because you get a hit of this, and it gives you the stamina. But how long does it last? And then you're in rehab, and what kind of b******t is that? Or you're falling down on stage and passing out halfway through the show.''

And although he enjoyed a promiscuous time in his younger years, he insisted this soon ended when he got scared about fathering children with women he didn't know.

He told GQ magazine: ''It wasn't the sex and it wasn't the drugs. It was... babies. Holy s**t! The first time you get that phone call when someone says... hey, guess what? That's called fear, shock and awe. That's when I realised the gun was loaded, you know what I'm saying?''