Foreigner

There are songs that turn into a question and stop belonging to anyone. "I Want to Know What Love Is" is one of those: a gospel choir, an enormous voice and a line that anyone understands in any language. The story usually told says it was written by two foreigners, an Englishman and an American, and that this is the beauty of it. That isn't so. One man alone wrote it, and the other has spent years saying in public that the division of credits in this band was never fair. It is worth telling properly, because the fact doesn't ruin the song: it explains it.

Three Britons and three Americans

Foreigner was formed in New York in 1976 with six musicians: the British guitarist Mick Jones, the multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald — who came from King Crimson — the drummer Dennis Elliott, the American singer Lou Gramm, the keyboard player Al Greenwood and the bass player Ed Gagliardi. Three from one side of the Atlantic and three from the other, split in equal parts.

The name was Jones's idea and it is literal: wherever they played, half the band was always going to be foreign. It is a name with no epic to it, almost administrative, and yet it ended up describing fairly well what they did. Stadium rock made by people from two different schools: Jones's arranger's craft, raised in the British industry, pushing against an American throat that could roar on a hard track and break on a ballad without sounding false.

Ten weeks in second place

At the start they hit with straight rock: "Feels Like the First Time", "Cold as Ice", "Hot Blooded", "Double Vision", "Urgent", "Juke Box Hero". Almost all of them carry both signatures, Jones and Gramm, and that partnership is what built the catalogue. Foreigner understood something not everyone understands: that a rock anthem needs, before guitars, a melody anyone can sing in a car.

Then they lowered the revs, and there lies the strangest fact of their history. "Waiting for a Girl Like You", from 1981, spent ten weeks at number two on the Hot 100 without ever reaching number one: it is the longest run in second place in the history of that chart. It was blocked first by "Physical", by Olivia Newton-John, and then by "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)", by Hall & Oates. Ten weeks looking at the summit from the step below, because of two songs that had nothing to do with each other.

The song one man wrote alone

"I Want to Know What Love Is" was written by Mick Jones, and he wrote it alone. The choir is the New Jersey Mass Choir, with Jennifer Holliday and Tom Bailey on backing vocals, and that decision — putting a whole church choir into a rock ballad — is what lifts it off the ground. It was number one on the Hot 100 on 2 February 1985, for two weeks, and number one in Britain from 15 January of that same year, for three.

Lou Gramm sings it. He doesn't sign it. And that, in a band whose public identity was the Jones-Gramm pairing, is not a bookkeeping detail: Gramm has publicly disputed how the group's credits were divided up. The song the world uses as a definition of Foreigner is, on paper, the work of a single member, performed by another who was never happy with the arrangement.

The ceremony they didn't attend

In April 2024, when the class of inductees was announced, Gramm told Rolling Stone that justice was finally being done. That quote is real and is from then, six months before the ceremony, not from the day of the award. The precision matters, because what happened afterwards was something else.

On 19 October 2024, in Cleveland, Foreigner entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Mick Jones did not attend: he watched it from home and the award was collected by his daughter, Annabelle Dexter-Jones. Dennis Elliott didn't go either. Gramm sang a single song, while Demi Lovato, Sammy Hagar and Kelly Hansen divided up the rest. Days later he complained in public: he said it was almost as if a trick had been played on them and, to Rolling Stone, that the rug had been pulled from under their feet. Jones had made his Parkinson's disease public himself on 21 February 2024 and has not played with the band since 2022.

What to remember

Foreigner was an anthem machine with a very clear division of labour and a set of books that never quite balanced. Jones built the songs, Gramm made them sound as if something had happened to him, and out of that friction came ten years of radio. The record of ten weeks in second place portrays them better than any number one: enormous, impossible to ignore and always one step below the place where history keeps the greats.

And the question in the title still stands, even if a single person signed it. An Englishman wrote it in New York, an American who disputes the credits sang it, a gospel choir from New Jersey held it up, and the band's founder heard it celebrated from his house, without going up on stage. A song about wanting to know what love is ended up being, without meaning to, also a song about how hard it is to divide up what several people make.

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Sources

Foreigner is a rock band formed in New York in 1976 by Mick Jones (guitar, British), Ian McDonald (multi-instrumentalist, British, formerly of King Crimson), Dennis Elliott (drums, British), Lou Gramm (vocals, American), Al Greenwood (keyboards, American) and Ed Gagliardi (bass, American); the name was proposed by Jones in reference to the fact that, wherever they played, half the line-up would be foreign. Their hits include "Feels Like the First Time", "Cold as Ice", "Hot Blooded", "Double Vision", "Urgent" and "Juke Box Hero", several of them co-written by Jones and Gramm, as well as "Waiting for a Girl Like You" (1981), also co-written by both, which spent ten weeks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 without reaching number one, the longest run in that position in the history of the chart; it was blocked by "Physical", by Olivia Newton-John, and by "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)", by Hall & Oates. "I Want to Know What Love Is" was written solely by Mick Jones and features the New Jersey Mass Choir, with Jennifer Holliday and Tom Bailey on backing vocals; it reached number one on the Hot 100 on 2 February 1985, where it remained for two weeks, and number one in Britain on 15 January 1985, for three weeks. Lou Gramm has publicly questioned the division of songwriting credits within the group. In April 2024, when the class of inductees was announced, Gramm told Rolling Stone that justice was being done to the band. Foreigner entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 19 October 2024 in Cleveland; Mick Jones did not attend and the award was collected by his daughter Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Dennis Elliott did not attend either and Gramm performed a single song, while Demi Lovato, Sammy Hagar and Kelly Hansen performed the rest. Days later Gramm publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the treatment received at the ceremony. Mick Jones made his Parkinson's disease public on 21 February 2024 and has not performed with the band since 2022. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Rolling Stone, Ultimate Classic Rock, Wikipedia and other coverage.