Foreigner - Double Vision

In a display of uncommon coolness, my Dad let me pick out an album at JC Penny’s in 1977 for no reason at all. The album I chose was Foreigner’s debut album. There were two bad ass singles all over radio from it: “Cold As Ice” and “Feels Like The First Time,” so I figured the rest of the album was pretty bad assed.
It was, for the most part, and I treated that album with extra care, because I wasn’t quite sure if my Dad would all of a sudden go “Hey, I’m gonna need that Foreigner album now” even though he never did that before. His records and mine were frequently segregated.
The next summer, Foreigner’s follow up Double Vision came out. I was over at my Grandparent's house when, out of nowhere, the lead single “Hot Blooded” was all over radio. If you’ve ever heard “Hot Blooded,” you understand why it was all over radio: because it rules. Oh you can sit there now and make fun of the idea of a Foreigner song being awesome but do you know how I know you’re wrong? Because the moment I go “Well I’m hot blooded” you automatically follow it with “Check it and see.”
Fuck, I’ve heard my wife sing it to our baby daughter, so you know future generations are going to be familiar with it, and that’s a clear sign that something rules, regardless of how many times you’ve heard it, or how jaded you may be with your Godspeed Black Emperor albums.
And I like Godspeed You Black Emperor albums, by the way.
Grandparents have a tendency to give you money when you visit them; I think its candy when you’re younger and then it moves to money when you get older. Anyway, I took the money that I had gotten from the Grandparents and went home after that visit in ’78 and immediately bought Double Vision, the album that contained that awesome “Hot Blooded” song. I bought it early enough that I knew the title track and “Blue Morning, Blue Day” before they became hit singles later on.
So is the rest of the album as awesome? Not really. It’s a Foreigner album, silly! A Foreigner album always contains about two or three great songs, a few good ones, and then about an entire side of filler. The filler here is “Tramontane” (a pointless instrumental by the keyboard player), “Lonely Children,” “Spellbinder,” and two tracks sung by Mick Jones, “Back Where You Belong” and “I Have Waited So Long.” Why they allowed Mick Jones to handle lead when they had Lou Fucking Gramm on lead vocals is beyond me, but then again, so is Mick Jones’ decision to carry on with the Foreigner name without Lou Fucking Gramm even in the line up.
Someone clearly needs to remind Mick Jones that he is “Mick Jones,” and that his most famous claim to fame prior to striking gold with Foreigner (thanks to the throat of Lou Gramm) was playing with Spooky Tooth.
Quick: name me a song by Spooky Tooth….exactly.
So now that we’ve adequately made fun of Mick Jones and the shittier material of Double Vision, it’s time to rightfully acknowledge how great the remaining tracks are. Those three singles plus the midtempo “You’re All I Am” and the side one closer “Love Has Taken It’s Toll” remain top notch. Had the band taken some time after the first one (Double Vision came only a year after the debut) and done the same thing for their third album Head Games (which came a year after this one), Foreigner would have had the elusive awesome album that they never managed to get.
Which is exactly what caused you to snicker in the first place.