{"id":952056,"date":"2026-05-11T06:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952056\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T06:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:34:15","slug":"i-want-to-know-what-love-is-by-foreigner-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/952056\/","title":{"rendered":"I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner: The Story Behind The Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insomnia had its benefits for Mick Jones<\/a> in the 80s. As night fell on the circus his life had become since Foreigner<\/a> released their all-conquering album, 4<\/a>, in 1981, the guitarist found himself with room to breathe and time to write.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always worked late at night, when everybody left and the phone stopped ringing,\u201d Jones recalls. \u201cI Want To Know What Love Is came up at three in the morning sometime in 1984. I don\u2019t know where it came from. I consider it a gift that was sent through me. I think there was something bigger than me behind it. I\u2019d say it was probably written entirely by a higher force.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As he sat at the keyboard in the studio of his Kensington apartment, Jones couldn\u2019t decide if his heart was half-empty or half-full. \u201cThe song was an expression of my tempestuous private life over the three years before,\u201d he says, explaining its meaning. \u201cI\u2019d been through a divorce, and met someone else who I was going to marry. There\u2019d been turmoil in the band through the huge pressure of selling millions of albums, and me and Lou [Gramm, vocals] were entering a cold-war situation. I\u2019d just come back to England from New York and was happy to be in touch with my roots. So it was an emotional time that stirred up a lot of things.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat night I only managed the title, the opening chords and the chorus,\u201d Jones adds, \u201cbut that was enough to make me go into the bedroom where my soon-to-be wife was asleep and tell her I had an idea for a song called I Want To Know What Love Is. She just fixed me with this strange look and said [offended]: \u2018What do you mean? Don\u2019t you already know what love is?\u2019. I dragged her into the studio to hear it, which must say something. You always know when you\u2019ve got something strong, and this song definitely moved me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is (Official Music Video) – YouTube
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Jones was happy enough with the song to hand it over to Gramm, bassist Rick Wills and drummer Dennis Elliott for Foreigner\u2019s forthcoming Agent Provocateur album. \u201cBut I was still looking for ways to enhance it in a spiritual way,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI\u2019d even considered approaching Aretha Franklin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end I was having lunch with a guy who ran a gospel music label. He sent me a bunch of albums, and one was by the New Jersey Mass Choir. When I heard them, I immediately had the finished song in my head. So I drove out to New Jersey and watched them in rehearsals, and it sounded fantastic. They were fresh; they\u2019d never recorded a mainstream album before.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would take one more divine intervention to get I Want To Know What Love Is down on tape. \u201cWe got about 30 of the choir into the Right Track studio in New York,\u201d explains Jones. \u201cWe did a few takes, and it was good, but it was still a bit tentative. So then they all got round in a circle, held hands and said The Lord\u2019s Prayer. And it seemed to inspire them, because after that they did it in one take. I was in tears, because my mum and dad were in the studio too, and it was so emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even the number-crunchers at Atlantic Records couldn\u2019t resist the emotional power of I Want To Know What Love Is.<\/p>\n

\u201cAhmet Erteg\u00fcn, the late president of Atlantic, had always been my mentor,\u201d Jones recalls. \u201cI invited him down to the studio one night, closed the door and said: \u2018Look, I just want to play you one song and hear what you think.\u2019 This is somebody who discovered Ray Charles<\/a> and Aretha Franklin, so his opinion was quite important. So we sat there and listened, and after the first chorus I looked over in his direction and tears were rolling down his cheeks. I thought: \u2018My God! I\u2019ve done it!\u2019 He was away with the music\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The release of I Want To Know What Love Is, at the end of 1984. confirmed that, for better or worse, this most personal of late-night confessionals had a meaning that struck a universal chord.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was No.1 worldwide,\u201d Jones says, \u201cand I doubt there are many people who haven\u2019t heard it. It was played on the radio all around the world. And I started getting letters from people who weren\u2019t necessarily fans but had found comfort in that song at times of suffering and sadness. Everybody took their own meaning from it. And that\u2019s all you can hope for as a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed the only dissent came from within Foreigner, with Gramm bemoaning the band\u2019s new public perception as balladeers, and publicly disowning the song that earned them it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe started to say that later,\u201d Jones recalls. \u201cI think it was to do with him wanting to break away from the band, and he chose that as something to talk about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is, there were softer songs on past albums. But, as it was Christmas, the label wanted to release I Want To Know What Love Is. If we\u2019d gone with a different first single it would have been interpreted differently. But I was always very proud of it, and thankful I was able to write it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 112, published in November 2007.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Insomnia had its benefits for Mick Jones in the 80s. As night fell on the circus his life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-952056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116554556107600370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}