Foreigner's first single in 1977, Feels Like The First Time, took from March to nearly June to claw its way into the Top Ten, and was already fading fast when this was dropped as their second single from their debut album in July. In three weeks it was in the Top 30, Top 20 in 6 weeks, and Top 10 by two months, (even blowing past the theme from Star Wars), peaked at #6, and was inescapable on radio for the next year. Foreigner went from "Sorry, who?" to "Foreigner!" virtually overnight.
It's also possible that every guy's dorm room stereo spontaneously blasting this song, with the pounding piano intro on "11", when played by a local radio station on a Saturday afternoon, may have been responsible for every door and window on the girls' dorm floor being vigorously slammed shut at warp speed, while delivering a witheringly pointed message on the dating ethos on a certain college campus that fall, and remains hilarious to this day. Just saying. One could make a case as that summer being the moment when nascent feminism began its long, slow decline into an endless future of box wine and cats.
3 comments:
Don McLean was right.
One of my first albums. Good times.
Back when they first came out, my GF at the time LOVED her some Foreigner. Me, I couldn't stand 'em, they bored me to tears. She dragged me out to see 'em at the old CLT Coliseum, opening for Styx, another band she really dug but I was mostly indifferent to. I actually fell asleep during the show, no kidding.
In later years I developed a taste for a handful of Foreigner songs (my crew unfailingly referred to the band as Foreign Queer, can't recall which of us came up with that handle), including "Double Vision," "Juke Box Hero," and most notably of all, Mick Jones's legendary knee-walking, pie-eyed drunk guitar solo on "Hot Blooded."
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