Agent Provocateur is the fifth studio album by the British-American rock band Foreigner, released on December 14, 1984.[5] The album was the band's only number-one album in the United Kingdom, and it reached the top five in the United States. Although album sales were lower than their previous work in the US, it contains the band's biggest hit single, the album’s love theme "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 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.[6]
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.[7][8] Then, once writing had been completed in September that year, official recording began in early October in New York with Horn.[7][8] Eventually, things fell apart around the time of the Christmas holidays when the band had joined him in England to resume the recording: Horn soon backed out of the project, feeling that he and the band were heading in different directions and that it was not going to work out.[7][8][9][10] In hindsight, the band recognised that Horn's production style wasn't really suited to their music, according to drummer Dennis Elliott: "he tried to make us more electronic than we wanted to be".[9] 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.[8][11] 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.[8] Sadkin agreed when reminiscing on the project in 1987:
"The Foreigner project a couple years back, on the other hand, just seemed to go on and on. Everyone, including the band, got really pissed off with it. They're used to it, though, and I wasn't, so it just threw me. I couldn't believe what was going on! There was a problem with people not coming in; Mick [Jones], who is the leader, not showing up for hours and hours, and so that obviously would really slow it down. Then the songs wouldn't be really ready. 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. 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. You can't write properly in the studio because you're under pressure. How can you really be creative when you're watching the clock going round burning up the money?"[12]
Even 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".[10] 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.[7] A total of nine months had been spent on recording the album.[11]
By the time of Agent Provocateur, Foreigner was frequently savaged by the contemporary rock music press. 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. Some swinging choice, huh? Either way they lose and this record is simply jammed with one dull defeat after another."[15]
Ultimate Classic Rock critic Eduardo Rivadavia rated "A Love in Vain" as Foreigner's fifth-most underrated song, calling it a "synth-powered cry of desperation" and a "dark-horse favorite of fans."[16]
Classic Rock critic Malcolm Dome rated two songs from Agent Provocateur as being among Foreigner's 10 most underrated – "Stranger in My Own House" at #6 and "Tooth and Nail" – which he describes as "the antidote to 'I Want to Know What Love Is'" – at #2.[17]
Billboard said that in "Tooth and Nail" the band flex "post-punk power chords with gusto."[18]
^Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. ISBN978-951-1-21053-5.
