Foreigner
With a legacy spanning five decades, Foreigner has dominated rock & roll radio, making them one of the best-selling rock bands of all time. With worldwide sales topping eighty million records, Foreigner’s extensive catalog of hits is still recognizable to this day, with their music embedded in pop culture from Miami Vice and The Simpsons to Arrested Development and Stranger Things.
Foreigner was built around the creative forces of Lou Gramm and Mick Jones, whose original vision for Foreigner was a fusion of rock, progressive rock, R&B, and pop sounds, and the lineup of Jones, Dennis Elliot, Al Greenwood, Ed Gagliardi, and Ian McDonald, paired with Lou Gramm’s distinctive and emotive vocals, brought it all together. Jones and Gramm became legendary songwriting partners, crafting an arsenal of multiplatinum albums and Top Thirty hits, including “Cold As Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time,” “Hot Blooded,” and “Juke Box Hero.” Their Number One U.S. hit “I Want to Know What Love Is” remains one of the Top 25 performed songs from the ASCAP catalog. In recognition of their partnership, the duo was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013.
The Jones/Gramm songwriting partnership resulted in Foreigner’s first eight singles charting in the Billboard Top Twenty, making them the first band to achieve this milestone since the Beatles. With the massive success of Foreigner’s second album Double Vision, the best-selling record of their career, the band quickly became an arena headliner.
Before recording 1979’s Head Games, Gagliardi was replaced by ex-Peter Frampton and Roxy Music bassist Rick Wills; Gagliardi’s departure was shortly followed by that of Greenwood and McDonald. Despite these lineup changes, the quartet of Jones, Gramm, Elliot, and Wills continued to record and tour arenas throughout the 1980s in whatever iteration they found themselves – a premise that has served the band for the decades since, as it continues with only Jones from the original lineup. Foreigner’s nearly fifty-year musical legacy has influenced everyone from Bon Jovi to Melissa Etheridge to Mark Ronson.
A rock legacy spanning nearly five decades.
Selected discography:
“Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold As Ice,” Foreigner (1977) • “Hot Blooded,” “Double Vision,” Double Vision (1978) • “Head Games,” Head Games (1979) • “Urgent,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “Juke Box Hero,” 4 (1981) • “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Agent Provocateur (1984) • “I Don’t Want to Live Without You,” “Say You Will,” Inside Information (1987)
Nominees: Dennis Elliott, Ed Gagliardi, Lou Gramm, Al Greenwood, Mick Jones, Ian McDonald, Rick Wills
