Jukebox Heroes: Anthology (2000)
Disc One
1. Feels Like the First Time
2. Long, Long Way From Home
3. Cold as Ice
4. Headknocker
5. Starrider
6. At War With the World
7. Double Vision
8. Blue Morning, Blue Day
9. Hot Blooded
10.I Have Waited So Long
11.Dirty White Boy
12.Head Games
13.Women
14.Rev on the Red Line
15.Break It Up
16.Jukebox Hero
17.Luanne
18.Urgent
19.Waiting For a Girl Like You
20.All Sewn Up
21.The Hoofer
Disc Two
1. I Want To Know What Love Is
2. Down on Love
3. Street Thunder
4. Reaction to Action
5. That Was Yesterday
6. Ready or Not
7. Midnight Blue
8. Heart Turns to Stone
9. I Don't Want To Live Without You
10.Say You Will
11.Can't Wait
12.Just Wanna Hold
13.Everything That Comes Around
14.Just Between You and Me
15.Lowdown and Dirty
16.Soul Doctor
17.Until the End of Time
18.Under the Gun
By the turn of the millennium, Foreigner had already released two standard greatest hits collections—Records in 1982, and The Very Best... and Beyond a decade later. Both served their purpose. So with Jukebox Heroes:The Foreigner Anthology, the band (or more likely, the label) decided to go bigger. This double-disc set aims to be the all-encompassing retrospective, covering the band’s career in much greater detail. In theory, it’s a sensible move. In practice, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
The material from the eight studio albums is all well represented—no major complaints there. You get the big hits (Cold as Ice, Hot Blooded, I Want to Know What Love Is, etc.), along with deeper cuts and a few curiosities that might be new even to seasoned fans. Forty-plus songs across two discs is certainly generous, and to its credit, the set avoids too much obvious redundancy.
Where it starts to wobble a bit is in the filler. And by filler, I don’t mean deep album cuts—I mean songs that aren’t even Foreigner songs. In order to stretch this into a full-blown anthology, the compilers decided to throw in several solo tracks by both Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, along with a couple of selections from Jones’s earlier band, Spooky Tooth. Gramm’s Midnight Blue is the clear standout among these—arguably his best solo work, and a song that still holds up well in a Foreigner-adjacent playlist. The rest? Less essential. The Spooky Tooth material sounds completely out of place, and most of the other solo cuts, while respectable, don’t add much to the overall picture. They simply don’t belong in a Foreigner collection. The result is a somewhat diluted listening experience, especially for those just looking for the band’s core catalog.
This is also one of those releases that came before the digital era really took hold, so at the time, a comprehensive physical package made a lot more sense. Now? With streaming and playlists at everyone’s fingertips, the logic of mixing band and solo material in one place feels even murkier.
Still, if you’re the type who wants a more expansive overview of Foreigner’s universe—with a few extras tossed in for context—this set does offer value. The remastering is solid, the packaging is decent, and there’s a sense of completeness here that earlier compilations lacked. But for the casual fan? You’re probably better off sticking with a more focused hits package. This one aims wide and hits the mark only part of the time.
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