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"Waiting for a Girl Like You" is a 1981 power ballad by the British-American rock band Foreigner. The distinctive synthesizer theme was performed by the then-little-known Thomas Dolby.
It was the second single released from the album 4 (1981) and was co-written by Lou Gramm and Mick Jones. The opening motif was written by Ian McDonald. It has become one of the band's most successful songs worldwide, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 1 on Billboard's Rock Tracks chart, and number 1 on the Radio & Records (R&R) Top 40/CHR chart. On both the Billboard and R&R Adult Contemporary chart, the song reached number 5. The song peaked at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart.
"Waiting for a Girl Like You" achieved a chart distinction by spending its record-setting 10 weeks in the number 2 position of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, without ever reaching the top. It debuted on the Hot 100 chart dated October 10, 1981. It reached the number 2 position in the week of November 28, where it was held off the number 1 spot by Olivia Newton-John's single "Physical" for nine consecutive weeks, and then by Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" for a tenth week on January 30, 1982. Because of its chart longevity, it ended up being the number 19 song on the Top 100 singles of 1982. The song was the band's biggest hit until "I Want to Know What Love Is" hit number 1 in 1985.
Jones said of writing the song that:
It just came out. I had no idea what it meant, but it got to the point where I couldn't even be in the studio when we were recording it sometimes. It left such a deep impression on me. It's the kind of song that the pen does the writing, and you don't even know where it came from. But I feel that it's stuff that's floating around at times, and you have to grasp it. It's kind of flying around in the air, and you just have to be open enough to let that flow through you.
In his autobiography, Lou Gramm tells of a beautiful, mysterious woman who appeared in the control room when he was recording his vocal and gave him the inspiration to deliver the stirring take that was better than he has ever sung the song. He writes that this ephemeral beauty vanished, and he has never discerned her identity.
The introduction was created by Dolby using a Minimoog synthesizer. Dolby remembers Lange leaving him to his own devices in the studio one night, "like a kid locked in a toy shop" to develop the intro to the song with six tracks of the multitrack available. As a result he made the "Eno-esque" ambient drones. These were sustained single notes in a minor scale, each recorded on a single track of a (separate) 2" multitrack tape; Dolby "played" the faders on the mixing console at Electric Lady Studios (by fading in and out the sustained notes) like a mellotron and bounced down the result onto two tracks. Drummer Dennis Elliott likened the intro to "massage music" but Mick Jones liked it and it stuck.
The song lists at number 100 on "Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time".
File Hashes
HASH1: 32C8F1C4B72FF96C
HASH2: 95329F321E444070 (MP3)
HASH1: FBECC653CDC78DDB HASH2: 72E65EC532ECE99B (FLAC)
Available in:
"Waiting for a Girl Like You" is a 1981 power ballad by the British-American rock band Foreigner. The distinctive synthesizer theme was performed by the then-little-known Thomas Dolby.
It was the second single released from the album 4 (1981) and was co-written by Lou Gramm and Mick Jones. The opening motif was written by Ian McDonald. It has become one of the band's most successful songs worldwide, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 1 on Billboard's Rock Tracks chart, and number 1 on the Radio & Records (R&R) Top 40/CHR chart. On both the Billboard and R&R Adult Contemporary chart, the song reached number 5. The song peaked at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart.
"Waiting for a Girl Like You" achieved a chart distinction by spending its record-setting 10 weeks in the number 2 position of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, without ever reaching the top. It debuted on the Hot 100 chart dated October 10, 1981. It reached the number 2 position in the week of November 28, where it was held off the number 1 spot by Olivia Newton-John's single "Physical" for nine consecutive weeks, and then by Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" for a tenth week on January 30, 1982. Because of its chart longevity, it ended up being the number 19 song on the Top 100 singles of 1982. The song was the band's biggest hit until "I Want to Know What Love Is" hit number 1 in 1985.
Jones said of writing the song that:
It just came out. I had no idea what it meant, but it got to the point where I couldn't even be in the studio when we were recording it sometimes. It left such a deep impression on me. It's the kind of song that the pen does the writing, and you don't even know where it came from. But I feel that it's stuff that's floating around at times, and you have to grasp it. It's kind of flying around in the air, and you just have to be open enough to let that flow through you.
In his autobiography, Lou Gramm tells of a beautiful, mysterious woman who appeared in the control room when he was recording his vocal and gave him the inspiration to deliver the stirring take that was better than he has ever sung the song. He writes that this ephemeral beauty vanished, and he has never discerned her identity.
The introduction was created by Dolby using a Minimoog synthesizer. Dolby remembers Lange leaving him to his own devices in the studio one night, "like a kid locked in a toy shop" to develop the intro to the song with six tracks of the multitrack available. As a result he made the "Eno-esque" ambient drones. These were sustained single notes in a minor scale, each recorded on a single track of a (separate) 2" multitrack tape; Dolby "played" the faders on the mixing console at Electric Lady Studios (by fading in and out the sustained notes) like a mellotron and bounced down the result onto two tracks. Drummer Dennis Elliott likened the intro to "massage music" but Mick Jones liked it and it stuck.
The song lists at number 100 on "Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time".
File Hashes
HASH1: 32C8F1C4B72FF96C HASH2: 95329F321E444070 (MP3) HASH1: FBECC653CDC78DDB HASH2: 72E65EC532ECE99B (FLAC) 
Rock 
Good Natured 
Rock/Pop 
132,226 
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UnlockedData Complete
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