In 1984, Foreigner recorded the song that would become the band’s biggest hit, but one of its most recognizable elements wasn’t part of the original plan.
“I Want to Know What Love Is,” released in November 1984 as the lead single from Foreigner’s fifth studio album Agent Provocateur paired Lou Gramm’s lead vocal with the soaring voices of the New Jersey Mass Choir. The power ballad eventually became Foreigner’s first and only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
But according to Gramm, Foreigner hadn’t even considered putting a choir on the song.
In a new interview on The Jordan Edwards Show, the original Foreigner frontman revealed that the idea arrived unexpectedly while the band was finishing the track.
“We hadn’t even thought of a choir,” Gramm said.
According to Gramm, a friend of guitarist Mick Jones who worked as a record label representative for a gospel choir stopped by the studio to say hello. While there, he happened to hear Foreigner working on “I Want to Know What Love Is,” which at that point featured a rough vocal from Gramm.
“He heard that and he goes, ‘Mick,’ he says, ‘don’t finish the song,'” Gramm recalled.
The visitor told Jones he knew “the best gospel choir you’ll ever want to hear” and asked him to imagine what those voices could do to the song’s choruses.
The suggestion moved remarkably quickly from idea to reality.
“A day and a half later, he brought them in,” Gramm said.
The New Jersey Mass Choir had already been given a rough version of the song to learn before arriving at the studio. Once Foreigner played the track and the choir began singing the chorus, Gramm knew they were hearing something special.
“It sounded like church,” he recalled. “Just like church.”
The effect in the control room was immediate.
“The guys in the band were in the control room and tears started flowing down our faces uncontrollably because it was so beautiful and so touching,” Gramm said.
The moment also changed how Gramm understood the song itself.
“We hadn’t intended it to be a song like that,” he added, “but that’s the kind of song it ended up being.”
The finished recording featured the New Jersey Mass Choir alongside additional backing vocals from Dreamgirls star Jennifer Holliday, while Thompson Twins frontman Tom Bailey contributed synthesizer.
And if Foreigner had any doubts about the song’s commercial potential before the choir arrived, Gramm says they disappeared afterward.
“We certainly knew we had something before the choir, but after the choir, there was no doubt that that was going to be our first single,” he said. Even Atlantic Records personnel who heard the performance had difficulty containing their emotions, according to Gramm.
That instinct proved correct.
“I Want to Know What Love Is” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1985, knocking Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” from the top spot. It also became Foreigner’s first and only No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart and topped charts in numerous other countries. Billboard ultimately ranked it as the No. 4 Hot 100 song of 1985.
More than four decades later, the song remains inseparable from the voices that Foreigner never originally intended it to have. And for Gramm, the first time he heard them remains powerful enough to remember exactly what happened inside that control room: The band cried.
Related: 1981 Hit’s Iconic Solo Happened After 2 Foreigner Stars Found a Motown Legend Playing 2 Blocks Away at 12:30 a.m.
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