“Waiting For A Girl Like You” by Foreigner

"Waiting for a Girl Like You" is Foreigner easing off the throttle on 4, their 1981 album on Atlantic: a power ballad Lou Gramm and Mick Jones wrote together that became the record's second single. Ian McDonald came up with the opening motif, and the synth theme that curls through it was played by Thomas Dolby, then barely known. Gramm sings lead, Jones plays guitar and splits keyboards with Bob Mayo, while Rick Wills and Dennis Elliott hold down bass and drums; Jones produced it with Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who also turns up in the stack of backing voices.

It did its business on the charts: number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it sat for a record-setting 10 weeks and never got to the top, number 1 on Billboard's Rock Tracks chart and number 8 in the UK.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.