Is Foreigner underrated?

Thanks for the correction. I erroneously posted that he is from Boston.

 

Always enjoyed this song.
In my opinion, one of their best ballads...

 

Couldn't agree more. It's produced within an inch of it's life but it's great. Lou sounds fabulous on it. Love the weird changes in the bridge.

Ed

 

That wasn't even meant to be a correction. I was sort of caught up in the moment and didn't notice your Boston comment.

 

It's also not just Mick's tune. Mick even says Lou is somewhat responsible for some of it. Lou claims responsibility for more. Writing credits are so completely political anyway. I'm not in love with the tune but Lou destroyed the vocal. The ad-libbing totally shapes the end of the tune and no way it was written into the tune. He should have gotten co-writing credit just for that.

Please tell us Mick's motivation. I've never known and I'm curious.

Ed

 

That must have been awful to watch. Was his range torched by then or did the meds do that?

Ed

 

I've read that he was at a critical time in his life and just put down what he was feeling. Whatever he was going through was sure a powerful emotion.

 

I don't really remember his range. Just his stage presence and and forgetting the lyrics was shocking enough. But he tried his best.

The band was top notch!

 

The only Foreigner songs that I prefer are the ones before "4"

 

They are a stone-deaf pauper's LZ

 

The Godfather III, Rocky V, and Ghostbusters 2016 of Foreigner songs: Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" Duet with fun.'s Nate Ruess Available as a Digital Single - Music News - ABC News Radio »

 

Foreigner: Mass-Appeal Rock in a Post-Golden Age »

Nice article from 1981....I wasn't aware of Jones early encounter with John Lennon:

But ever since Foreigner made its debut in 1977 –— the year of punk –— Jones has been bedeviled by hostile rock critics, who have put down Foreigner as faceless hacks and tended to dismiss the group's music as "pomp rock," and thus Old Wave, and therefore irrelevant. He has been hurt by the lambastings ritually inflicted whenever Foreigner, to the scribes' gawping incomprehension, has launched yet another jackpot album into the commercial stratosphere. Exactly what, Jones wondered, was he doing wrong?

"There's no use hiding it," he acknowledges. "The criticism really got to me at one point. I felt that what we'd done was quite dignified, in a way. We'd never sold out. We'd never done anything really cheap, you know? I thought that we had really started something ... not new, totally, but we had our own niche, we were doing things differently. But I guess I realized we weren't doing things differently enough."

 

Good one. This an excellent Lou Gramm vocal performance and Mick Jones does a tasty solo at 3:05. He's not the greatest lead player but he has his moments.

 

When Foreigner broke in 1977, Jones was already 33 and was a veteran of the British music scene from the early 1960s (his first UK chart hit as a band member was in 1961), and the act he was playing with toured with the Beatles in France in 1964. He thus knew many of the big names from the Beatles era and afterwards - all of the Beatles (he recorded with Harrison in 1973), Jimmy Page, etc.

 

I had thought the Harrison recording came because he and Mick Jones both worked with Gary Wright.

 

Gramm was very good, quite different style to Perry so hard to compare, but you're right, basically.

 

'That was Yesterday' is one of the greatest vocal performances by anyone ever!

I still have the 12" extended version, does anyone know if it's available on CD?

 

That cover speaks volumes. Ouch.

D.D.

 

They were...ok. I don't think that I will ever actively seek out one of their albums in the future (I heard more than enough the first time) but they did a good job playing their version of corporate rock. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

 

From your lips to God's ear.

 

It's a great vocal that really feels. The last line wrings beautifully.

Ed

 

Corporate rock, I love that one. Such a desperation move by the hipster critics because no one buys the garbage they tout. Critics music should be called "loser rock". The critics want to stake their claim as the arbiters of good taste, but nobody cares what they think so they're bitter and angry hacks.

 

Yeah, I can tell you're not at all defensive about rock critics.

 

Defensive? I just think they're a bunch of idiots. I listen to what I want to listen to, the critics mean nothing to me. They can continue to write what they want and nobody will care. For the record, I haven't listened to a Foreigner cd in 20 years. However, I can recognize a hit song when I hear it.