| Unusual Heat | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Foreigner |
| Cover: | Foreigner_-_Unusual_Heat.jpg |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | June 14, 1991 |
| Recorded: | 1990 |
| Label: | Atlantic |
| Prev Title: | Inside Information |
| Prev Year: | 1987 |
| Next Title: | The Very Best ... and Beyond |
| Next Year: | 1992 |
Unusual Heat is the seventh studio album by British-American rock band Foreigner, released on June 14, 1991, by Atlantic Records.[1] Recorded at several different studios across the state of New York and England, and produced by Terry Thomas and Mick Jones, it was the only album with lead singer Johnny Edwards. He replaced original lead singer Lou Gramm. Edwards, a veteran singer who'd done a tour of duty with Montrose and was then the frontman for another Atlantic act, Wild Horses. As Edwards told UCR in a separate interview, Wild Horses had only just signed its record deal — and although joining for Foreigner was obviously tempting for financial reasons if nothing else, he was reluctant to walk away from his own band after struggling for years to make it on his own terms.
Jones, however, was undeterred—and eager to work with a singer most fans hadn't heard of rather than hiring a big-name replacement who'd come with his own baggage. "We were in rehearsal and talks with a couple of guys who were both strong candidates and had kind of a name," he admitted. "I felt eventually that it was probably going to be better to not try and put an all-star band together, but to keep on the same kind of path with four people being involved in making a record and not really, I think I would probably say, cheapening the band at that point—cheapening the meaning and the direction of the band."[2]
Unusual Heat was a commercial failure, only peaking at number 117 on the Billboard 200 chart – a sharp decline in sales comparing with all previous albums, all of which reached the Top 20 and became at least Platinum. Neither of the two singles released from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100, with "Lowdown and Dirty" only charting on the Mainstream Rock chart at #4.[3]
The original version of the song "Ready for the Rain", demoed by the Sacramento, CA based band Northrup in the late 1980s with Johnny Edwards on lead vocals, was finally released in 2001 by Metal Mayhem Music as part of a collection of demos under the name JK Northrup.
| Chart (1991) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[4] | 102 |
| Finnish Albums (The Official Finnish Charts)[5] | 39 |
| Japanese Albums (Oricon)[6] | 74 |