Agent Provocateur (1984)
1. Tooth and Nail
2. That Was Yesterday
3. I Want To Know What Love Is
4. Growing Up the Hard Way
5. Reaction to Action
6. Stranger in My Own House
7. A Love in Vain
8. Down on Love
9. Two Different Worlds
10.She's Too Tough
By the mid-1980s, the musical tide had turned. Arena rock—so dominant in the late ’70s—was being quietly ushered off stage by a new wave of synth-pop, hair metal, and whatever it was Phil Collins was doing. Most of the big names from the previous decade were starting to sound tired, irrelevant, or both. Foreigner, to their credit, managed to buck that trend, at least for a while.
Agent Provocateur didn’t match the commercial juggernaut that was 4—but then again, not much did. What it did have was the single that would come to define them in the eyes of the general public: I Want to Know What Love Is. A gospel-tinged power ballad complete with choir, soaring production, and a genuinely affecting vocal from Lou Gramm, the song was a noticeable shift in direction. Gone were the gritty guitar riffs and straight-ahead rock arrangements; in their place was a sweeping, soulful plea that somehow landed with just about everyone—even, apparently, televangelists.
And while the single may have felt like a stylistic outlier, the rest of the album doesn’t stray nearly as far from the Foreigner formula. Yes, this is very much a product of its time—there are synths galore, and some of the production choices haven’t aged particularly gracefully—but there’s still plenty of meat on the bone. Tracks like That Was Yesterday and Reaction to Action show that the band could lean into the slick ’80s aesthetic without completely losing their identity. The hooks are still there, the energy’s intact, and Lou Gramm’s vocals are as powerful as ever.
The production reins were handed over to Alex Sadkin, best known for his work with acts like Talking Heads and Duran Duran—an unusual choice, perhaps, for a band like Foreigner, but one that largely works. While it doesn’t have the punch or polish of Mutt Lange’s work on 4, the sound here is still sharp and radio-ready, even when it veers a bit too close to aerobic class territory (Growing Up the Hard Way and She’s Too Tough could easily accompany a workout montage in a long-forgotten VHS fitness tape). There’s still room for a few old-school rock moments, most notably in the album’s opening track Tooth and Nail, a lean, hard-hitting cut that reminds listeners that Foreigner could still bring the fire when they wanted. Stranger in My Own House follows suit, though with slightly less impact.
Sure, there’s a bit of filler here—there usually is—but on the whole, Agent Provocateur proves that Foreigner was still a viable force in the MTV era. Rather than resist the changing tides, they found a way to ride the wave without completely losing sight of where they came from.
No, it’s not 4. But it doesn’t try to be. And in a decade where a lot of their peers either disappeared or became parodies of themselves, that’s worth something.
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