A man wakes his sleeping fiancee to tell her he has written a song, and she is insulted by the title. Thirty gospel singers stand around in a circle, hold hands, and say the Lord's Prayer, and the take that follows is the one on the record. The president of Atlantic Records, the man who signed Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, sits in the dark and cries. Mick Jones has told the story of "I Want to Know What Love Is" for the better part of two decades, and the through-line never changes: he does not think he wrote it.

"I Want to Know What Love Is" was written alone by Foreigner's Mick Jones in the small hours of a night in 1984, at a keyboard in his London apartment, out of a period of divorce and band turmoil. He handed it to the band for the Agent Provocateur album, then brought in the New Jersey Mass Choir for the gospel backing. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 2, 1985, and remains Foreigner's only US chart-topper.

The song that arrived at 3am

Jones did his writing when the world went quiet. "I always worked late at night, when everybody left and the phone stopped ringing," he told Classic Rock. The song came in that window and, in his account, came from somewhere outside him. "I Want To Know What Love Is came up at three in the morning sometime in 1984," Jones said. "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."

It was not written out of nothing. It was written out of a bad stretch. "The song was an expression of my tempestuous private life over the three years before," Jones told Classic Rock. "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."

Foreigner in a 1979 Atlantic Records publicity photo

The wife who was offended by the title

That first night produced only the frame. "That night I only managed the title, the opening chords and the chorus," Jones told Classic Rock, "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." Her reaction was not what he expected. "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."

The detail he later added is that the song is about her. Telling the same story to Songwriter Universe in 2016, Jones recalled his own answer to her question: "No Darling, I know [what love is]...it is about you." And he kept describing the writing as something happening to him rather than by him. "From there, the song, when it began, was sort of leading me. I wasn't writing the song...the song was leading me. It was such a powerful, soulful feeling."

The choir, and the Lord's Prayer take

Jones knew the track needed something he could not play. In the Classic Rock telling, the search was his own: "But I was still looking for ways to enhance it in a spiritual way," he said. "I'd even considered approaching Aretha Franklin." A gospel-label contact then sent him a stack of albums, one of them 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."

What happened in the studio is the beat Jones has never dropped from any version. "We got about 30 of the choir into the Right Track studio in New York," he told Classic Rock. "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." He has framed what the choir did to the meaning of the song, not just its sound: "I think the gospel feeling made it more of a universal song," he told Songwriter Universe. "It's not just necessarily about love between a man and woman, but also love in its general context."

The label boss who cried

The final believer Jones needed was Ahmet Ertegün, the head of Atlantic Records. "Ahmet Ertegün, the late president of Atlantic, had always been my mentor," Jones told Classic Rock. "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 one man in the band who hated it

The dissent came from inside. Lead singer Lou Gramm, who sang the song, later distanced himself from it, unhappy that a ballad had redefined a hard-rock band. Jones read the motive plainly. "He started to say that later," Jones told Classic Rock. "I think it was to do with him wanting to break away from the band, and he chose that as something to talk about." Jones's own verdict never wavered: "But I was always very proud of it, and thankful I was able to write it."

How the telling has grown over the decades

The spine of this story is fixed: the late-night arrival, the offended fiancee, the choir's prayer, Ertegün's tears. The pieces that drift are worth naming, because Jones has told this often enough for small numbers to move. In the Classic Rock telling that first ran in November 2007, the song arrives "at three in the morning"; telling it to Songwriter Universe in 2016, Jones puts it at "about 2:00 in the morning." The dialogue with his wife shifts slightly in the retelling too: in 2007 she says "What do you mean? Don't you already know what love is?", and in 2016 it comes out as "What do you mean...You don't know what love is?"

The largest drift is over whose idea the choir was. In the 2007 telling, the gospel direction is Jones's own instinct, chased down through Aretha Franklin and a gospel-label contact's albums. In the 2016 telling, the suggestion comes from someone else in the room: "(Legendary producer) Jerry Wexler was there as well. Jerry said, 'Did you ever think of putting a choir on it?'" Both can be partly true, a private instinct confirmed by a legend's nudge, but the two accounts do not name the same source of the idea, and smoothing them into one would be dishonest. What every version agrees on is the moment the choir held hands.

The honest bottom line

The uncomfortable fact under the hymn is that the man who wrote "I Want to Know What Love Is" barely credits himself with writing it, and the man who sang it to number one spent years disowning it. It is a power ballad, the exact form that made rock radio roll its eyes in the mid-80s, and it came out of a divorce and a band at war with itself. None of that dented it. It topped the American chart, it pulled a gospel choir onto a rock record for arguably the first time, and the letters Jones says he still gets from strangers who leaned on it in grief are the reason the song has outlived every argument about what kind of band Foreigner was supposed to be. Three years earlier, Waiting for a Girl Like You had held at number two for ten weeks without ever reaching the top; this time Jones finished the climb.

FAQ

What is the story behind "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner? Mick Jones wrote it alone in the middle of the night in 1984 at his London apartment, out of a period of divorce and tension within the band. He has said it felt like a gift written through him. He then brought in the New Jersey Mass Choir for the gospel vocals, and it became Foreigner's biggest hit.

Who wrote "I Want to Know What Love Is"? Mick Jones, Foreigner's guitarist and founder, wrote it by himself. Lead singer Lou Gramm sang it but did not co-write it, and later publicly distanced himself from the song.

Who is "I Want to Know What Love Is" about? Mick Jones has said the song is about the woman he was about to marry. He woke her the night he wrote it, and in a 2016 interview said his answer to her puzzled reaction was that the song "is about you."

What choir sings on "I Want to Know What Love Is"? The New Jersey Mass Choir. Jones has said about 30 members recorded the backing vocals at Right Track studio in New York, nailing the final take right after they joined hands and said the Lord's Prayer.

Did "I Want to Know What Love Is" reach number one? Yes. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of February 2, 1985, and held the top for two weeks. It was Foreigner's only US number one.

Sources

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Part of Stories Behind the Songs. See also In the Air Tonight and Every Rose Has Its Thorn.