A review in Creem read: 'On this, their latest excursion into the gaping jaws of pulverizing mediocrity, our boys continue to wrestle with an all-too-turgid identity crisis - they still can't decide whether it's stupider to aspire to poor man's Led Zep status or settle for being a weightier version of Chicago.

Critical reception īy the time of Agent Provocateur, Foreigner was frequently savaged by the contemporary rock music press. A total of nine months had been spent on recording the album. According to singer Lou Gramm, owing to the difference in production styles between Sadkin and Horn, only two of the tracks that had been cut with the latter were kept on the record, though it is unclear which ones. How can you really be creative when you’re watching the clock going round burning up the money?' Įven though the extent of Horn's contributions to the record is unclear, he claims to have done most of the backing tracks, including for 'I Want To Know What Love Is'. You can’t write properly in the studio because you’re under pressure.

That is why I don’t want to go into the studio when somebody wants to write the stuff there it just takes too long and it isn’t worth it, it doesn’t come out right. While the album was being mixed the lyrics were still being written! Things were being changed right up to the last minute, and that is what took a long time. I couldn’t believe what was going on! There was a problem with people not coming in Mick, who is the leader, not showing up for hours and hours, and so that obviously would really slow it down. They’re used to it, though, and I wasn’t, so it just threw me. Everyone, including the band, got really pissed off with it. 'The Foreigner project a couple years back, on the other hand, just seemed to go on and on. Sadkin agreed when reminiscing on the project in 1987: Sadkin helped rekindle the project when it was on the verge of total collapse, but despite that, according to Jones, recording still never seemed to end: the sessions had been dogged from the very start and continued to remain unfocused. Eventually, another month was spent trying to look for another producer to fill his shoes, subsequently hiring Alex Sadkin, who was busy finishing the Thompson Twins' Into the Gap album. Eventually, things started to fall apart around the time of the Christmas holidays – even though co-producer & guitarist Mick Jones recalled that it began after a day of recording – due to Horn being more concerned about the performance of the singles he had produced in Europe (for bands such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood) than the Foreigner record. Then, once writing had been completed in September that year, official recording began in early October in London with Horn. Within nearly two years of releasing 4, writing and preproduction for this album began as early as June 1983 in New York, with producer Trevor Horn. The follow-up single, ' That Was Yesterday', also proved to be a sizeable hit, peaking at #12 in the US The album was certified Platinum in the UK by the BPI, and triple Platinum in the US by the RIAA.

Although album sales were lower than their previous work in the US, it contains the band's biggest hit single, ' I Want to Know What Love Is', which is their only #1 single in the UK and the US, staying at the top spot for three and two weeks, respectively. The album was the band's first and only number one album in the United Kingdom, and it reached the top 5 in the United States. Agent Provocateur is the fifth studio album by the British-American rock band Foreigner, released on December 7, 1984.

Foreigner agent provocateur