- In “Urgent,” Foreigner frontman Lou Gramm gets a booty call from a lady he has history with. Her big emergency? She’s hot with desire. “Just wait and see how urgent my love can be,” she tells him.It seems like an offer he can’t refuse, but she’s been known to play tricks on his mind. It sounds like lust wins out in the end.
- Written by the Foreigner songwriting team of Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, “Urgent” was the first single from 4, one of the best-selling albums of the ’80s.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.
- 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, 4.
- Foreigner’s guitarist Mick Jones produced the 4 album with Mutt Lange, who is known as a very meticulous producer with a tremendous work ethic. Jones told Songfacts: “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.”
- On May 2, 2025, Foreigner released a Spanish-language version of “Urgent” with vocals by the band’s guitarist Luis Maldonado. The release coincided with Foreigner’s 2025 South American tour.
- That’s Junior Walker on saxophone. With his group Junior Walker & the All-Stars, he had a string of saxy hits in the ’60s, including “Shotgun” and “(I’m A) Road Runner.”When Foreigner started recording the song, Mick Jones decided it could use a “Junior Walker-style” sax solo. 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 gave them just what they were looking for. Walker sometimes joined the band when they performed it live.
