The 2000s File Feature
I Want To Know What Love Is
History of "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Mariah Carey "I Want to Know What Love Is" is a cover version recorded by American singer Mariah Carey, released …
01 The Story
History of "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Mariah Carey
"I Want to Know What Love Is" is a cover version recorded by American singer Mariah Carey, released in September 2009 as the lead single from her twelfth studio album Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel. The song was originally written by Mick Jones and performed by British-American rock band Foreigner, whose 1984 original reached number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom and became one of the definitive power ballads of the decade. Carey's interpretation nearly 25 years later introduced the song to a new generation of listeners while prompting extensive critical comparison between the two versions.
Mariah Carey, born in 1969 in Huntington, New York, is one of the best-selling recording artists in history, with a career spanning more than three decades and a vocal range and technical command widely regarded as among the most exceptional in popular music. By 2009, she had navigated a remarkable career trajectory that included extraordinary early commercial success in the 1990s, a period of personal and professional difficulty in the early 2000s, and a triumphant commercial and critical resurgence beginning with The Emancipation of Mimi in 2005. Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel was positioned as a continuation of that resurgence, and the choice of "I Want to Know What Love Is" as its lead single was both a strategic and an artistic decision.
The production of Carey's version was handled with a lush, contemporary R&B sensibility that distinguished it from the rock-oriented production of the Foreigner original. While the original had featured a gospel choir arrangement that gave it spiritual grandeur, Carey's version updated the sonic palette to align with late 2000s R&B production norms while retaining the song's core emotional architecture. The result was a version that felt simultaneously familiar to those who knew the original and fresh enough to function as a standalone work in the contemporary market.
Carey's vocal performance on the song was the subject of considerable discussion. Her ability to inhabit the song's emotional climaxes with her signature upper-register power while also demonstrating restraint and control in its quieter passages gave the cover a distinctive character. Critics and fans divided over whether the interpretation added meaningfully to the original or whether Foreigner's version remained definitive, but there was broad agreement that Carey's vocal delivery was technically impressive and emotionally committed.
On the Billboard Hot 100, "I Want to Know What Love Is" debuted at number 66 on the chart dated October 3, 2009. The song peaked at number 60 the following week before gradually declining, spending six weeks on the chart in total. While this represented a modest showing on the main singles chart, the song performed considerably better on other formats, particularly adult contemporary radio, where it gained substantial traction consistent with Carey's established strength in that format.
On the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the song achieved significantly stronger placement, reflecting the format's receptiveness to both Carey's established audience and the song's inherently adult-oriented emotional content. The adult contemporary chart performance was a more accurate measure of the song's commercial resonance with its core target demographic than the Hot 100 placing suggested.
Internationally, the song performed well in several markets, benefiting from both Carey's global following and the enduring recognition of the source material. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the cover received radio support that translated into chart placements and digital sales activity.
Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel as a whole did not match the commercial heights of The Emancipation of Mimi, but "I Want to Know What Love Is" served its function as a lead single effectively, re-establishing Carey's presence at radio and generating media attention around the album's release. The song's YouTube video accumulated over 250 million views in the years following its release, a figure that reflects both the song's original commercial reach and the way streaming platforms extended its life well beyond its initial chart impact. The cover stands as a significant entry in Carey's discography and a notable chapter in the broader history of one of popular music's most covered songs.
02 Song Meaning
Meaning of "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Mariah Carey
"I Want to Know What Love Is" is a plea for genuine emotional connection, addressed by a speaker who has spent years living behind emotional barriers and who now seeks, perhaps for the first time, to experience love in its fullest and most authentic form. The song's central confession is that despite all outward appearances of experience or self-sufficiency, the speaker has never truly known love and desires desperately to understand what it actually means. This admission of emotional ignorance or deprivation in someone apparently mature enough to know better gives the song its extraordinary emotional power.
The original composition by Mick Jones draws on the language of spiritual seeking as much as romantic longing. The yearning expressed in the song has a quality that transcends ordinary romantic desire, reaching toward something more fundamental: a need for warmth, acceptance, and genuine human connection that the speaker has either never found or has lost and cannot recover alone. In this reading, love functions not merely as a romantic relationship but as a state of emotional wholeness that the speaker seeks from another person.
Mariah Carey's interpretation inflects the song with her own artistic identity and, unavoidably, with the biographical resonances of her career at the time of recording. An artist who had publicly navigated personal difficulty and professional uncertainty before achieving renewed success brought a depth of lived experience to the song's central theme that enriched its emotional texture. Carey's delivery of the central declaration carries a weight that suggests genuine rather than theatrical longing, which is perhaps why the cover resonated with audiences who were familiar with her personal history.
The song also functions as an expression of emotional courage. The act of admitting that one does not know what love is, and asking another person to show you, requires a willingness to appear vulnerable and incomplete that the song frames as admirable rather than shameful. This is a significant element of the song's lasting appeal: it validates the experience of emotional inexperience or deprivation in people who may feel that these qualities should be hidden rather than acknowledged.
The gospel choir arrangement in both the original and in Carey's version is not incidental to the song's meaning. The use of gospel musical language, with its associations of collective witness, spiritual aspiration, and communal affirmation, elevates the personal romantic plea into something closer to a spiritual statement. The choir's affirmative presence suggests that the desire for love being expressed is recognized and validated by a larger community, which transforms what might otherwise be a private confession into a shared human aspiration.
Culturally, the song's endurance across multiple decades and multiple interpretations attests to the universality of its central theme. The need for love, for genuine connection and emotional understanding, is perhaps the most consistently addressed subject in the history of popular song, and "I Want to Know What Love Is" addresses it with a directness and emotional nakedness that explains its remarkable staying power. Carey's version contributed to this legacy by demonstrating that the song retained its emotional force when given a contemporary R&B production frame and delivered by one of the most technically accomplished vocalists in popular music history. The continued streaming popularity of her cover confirms that the song's emotional core remains immediately recognizable and resonant for contemporary listeners, regardless of when they first encounter it.
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