Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones wrote this song. In a Songfacts interview, he said: "'I Want To Know What Love Is' started off on more of a personal level. I'd been through a lot of relationships that eventually failed, and still searching for something that could really endure. And that sort of took a life of its own as well. It became more of a universal feeling. I adjusted that during the recording of it, and ended up putting a gospel choir on it. And you know, realized suddenly that I'd written almost a spiritual song, almost a gospel song. Sometimes, you feel like you had nothing to do with it, really. You're just putting it down on paper, or coming up with a melody that will bring the meaning of the song out, bring the emotion out in the song." Jones' relationship that sparked the song was with his then future wife Ann Dexter-Jones. Ann Dexter-Jones had previously been married to Laurence Ronson, a music publisher who discovered the British group Bucks Fizz. Their oldest child is the successful producer Mark Ronson, the man behind Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album. Jones raised Ronson from the age of 7, providing a rich musical environment that led to his success. On Foreigner's 2009 album Can't Slow Down, Ronson produced a new version of Foreigner's 1977 track "Fool For You Anyway." The New Jersey Mass Choir was brought in to sing the backing vocals, becoming the first gospel choir to appear on a #1 pop hit. Mick Jones knew he wanted a choir on the song and found the New Jersey Mass Choir through a bit of serendipity: they had the same lawyer. According to Jones, the choir's first attempts to sing their part in the studio didn't have the magic, but then they gathered in a circle, said the Lord's Prayer, and nailed it on the next take. The New Jersey Mass Choir recorded their own version of the song a short time later, which they included on an album of the same name with their take on contemporary songs like "Yah Mo B There" and "Time After Time." Their rendition of "I Want to Know What Love Is" was released as a single and bubbled under at #101 on the Hot 100 in February 1985, the same month Foreigner's version was #1. Foreigner recorded for Atlantic Records, and their 1981 album 4 spent more weeks at #1 than any album released by the label. Ahmet Ertegun, who was the head of Atlantic, cried when he first heard this song. Mick Jones explains: "Part of my dream at the beginning was to be on Atlantic Records, because of the heritage: all the R&B stars of the '50s, people like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. It meant so much to me and my growing up in music. So it meant a lot to have Ahmet Ertegun, who had been a part of that magical era and a person who I respected and looked up to, come into the studio. I took him aside and I said, 'I have a song to play you, Ahmet.' I took him into the studio, and we just sat there in two chairs, and I put the song on. Halfway through I looked over and indeed, there were tears coming out of his eyes. I thought, Whoa, this is a major moment for me. I've been able to impress this man who has heard some of the best, and produced some of the best music in the world. And here he is, and I've reached him emotionally. By the end of the song we were both in tears. Wonderful moments like that, they're just very meaningful." Jennifer Holliday sang backup. She is an R&B singer who has sung for Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, and Barbra Streisand, among others. She starred in the play Dreamgirls. The video was directed by Brian Gibson, whose next project was the film Poltergeist II: The Other Side. The clip has an interesting concept, showing folks at their quotidian jobs during the day, then coming together to form the choir to this song. Gibson later directed the films What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) and The Juror (1996). In 1998, he released a film called Still Crazy, featuring the song "The Flame Still Burns," co-written by Mick Jones and performed by the fictional band Strange Fruit. The song got a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song. In 2009 Mariah Carey covered this song for her second single from Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. When we asked Jones what he thought of her version, he said: "I think she's actually retained the integrity of the song. You know, the arrangement is very similar to the original. They haven't tampered with the song too much. She's captured a certain emotional thing, a feeling. And you know, it's always flattering to have people cover your songs. Well, sometimes not so flattering (laughs) depending on who it is. But I think she's put a lot of emotion into it. You can feel that she's gotten inside of the song." This is one of several very popular songs that was used on the first season of Miami Vice, appearing in the 1985 episode "Rites of Passage." Other TV series to use the song include: Big Mouth ("I Survived Jessi's Bat Mitzvah" - 2017) Orange Is the New Black ("Trust No Bitch" - 2015) New Girl ("Teachers" - 2014) Glee ("Tested" - 2014) Modern Family ("A Fair to Remember" - 2013) Parks and Recreation ("Practice Date" - 2009) Cold Case ("Shuffle, Ball Change" - 2007) Quantum Leap ("Temptation Eyes" - 1992)Movies to use the song include: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Bad Moms (2016) The Boss (2016) Rock of Ages (2012) Happy Feet Two (2011) Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009) 'Til There Was You (1997) Mr. Wrong (1996) Country star Kenny Chesney covered this for his 2016 album, Cosmic Hallelujah. It wasn't the first time a Nashville singer has recorded the tune - back in 2004 Wynonna Judd laid down a version for her album What the World Needs Now Is Love.
Insomnia had its benefits for Mick Jones in the 80s. As night fell on the circus his life had become since Foreigner released their all-conquering album, 4, in 1981, the guitarist found himself with room to breathe and time to write. “I always worked late at night, when everybody left and the phone stopped ringing,” Jones recalls. “I Want To Know What Love Is came up at three in the morning sometime in 1984. I don’t 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’d say it was probably written entirely by a higher force.” As he sat at the keyboard in the studio of his Kensington apartment, Jones couldn’t decide if his heart was half-empty or half-full. “The song was an expression of my tempestuous private life over the three years before,” he says, explaining its meaning. “I’d been through a divorce, and met someone else who I was going to marry. There’d 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’d 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. “That night I only managed the title, the opening chords and the chorus,” Jones adds, “but 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]: ‘What do you mean? Don’t you already know what love is?’. I dragged her into the studio to hear it, which must say something. You always know when you’ve got something strong, and this song definitely moved me.” Jones was happy enough with the song to hand it over to Gramm, bassist Rick Wills and drummer Dennis Elliott for Foreigner’s forthcoming Agent Provocateur album. “But I was still looking for ways to enhance it in a spiritual way,” he remembers. “I’d even considered approaching Aretha Franklin. “In 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’d never recorded a mainstream album before.” It would take one more divine intervention to get I Want To Know What Love Is down on tape. “We got about 30 of the choir into the Right Track studio in New York,” explains Jones. “We 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’s 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.” Even the number-crunchers at Atlantic Records couldn’t resist the emotional power of I Want To Know What Love Is. “Ahmet Ertegün, the late president of Atlantic, had always been my mentor,” Jones recalls. “I invited him down to the studio one night, closed the door and said: ‘Look, I just want to play you one song and hear what you think.’ This is somebody who discovered Ray Charles 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: ‘My God! I’ve done it!’ He was away with the music’.” 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. “It was No.1 worldwide,” Jones says, “and I doubt there are many people who haven’t heard it. It was played on the radio all around the world. And I started getting letters from people who weren’t necessarily fans but had found comfort in that song at times of suffering and sadness. Everybody took their own meaning from it. And that’s all you can hope for as a writer.” Indeed the only dissent came from within Foreigner, with Gramm bemoaning the band’s new public perception as balladeers, and publicly disowning the song that earned them it. “He started to say that later,” Jones recalls. “I think it was to do with him wanting to break away from the band, and he chose that as something to talk about. “The 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’d 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.” |
Who sings i wanna know what love is
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