FOREIGNER - URGENT

Released : June 22, 1981

Charted:  UK: #54    US: #4 

"Urgent" is a song by the British-American rock band Foreigner. Written by the Foreigner songwriting team of Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, this was the first single from “4”, one of the best-selling albums of the '80s. Before recording this album, two members of the group left, trimming the band from six members to four. This, along with the fact that it was their fourth album, explains the title. 

The group wanted a "Junior Walker-style" sax solo for this record. When they took a break from recording, one of the members read in New York newspaper The Village Voice that Walker was performing that night mere blocks from the recording studio. Walker accepted their offer to play, and the recording of the sax solo was swift and without a hitch. With an R&B sound, the song was a musical departure for the band; many listeners didn't recognize it as Foreigner when they first heard it. "A few people were trapped into liking it before they found out who it was," Jones told Sounds.

Foreigner's guitarist Mick Jones produced the album with Mutt Lange, who is known as a very meticulous producer with a tremendous work ethic. Jones told: "We locked horns at the beginning, both pretty strong-minded about what we wanted to achieve, and we gradually discovered that it was the same thing. He drew a lot out of me. He was the first person that insisted on listening to every single idea I had on every single cassette tape, or any ideas I had anywhere, down on paper or lyrically, phonetically, instrumentally. He pulled songs like 'Urgent' out of that, and contributed a lot to 'Juke Box Hero.' It ended up being a great relationship." 

Billboard said that "Guitars and keyboards supply the rhythmic punch on this tasty rocker." Billboard reviewer Gary Graff rated "Urgent" to be Foreigner's all-time greatest song, particularly praising Dolby's synthesizer and Walker's saxophone but also saying that the song "would have been killer" even without the sax solo.