Lou Gramm.

credit: Krishta Abruzzini

Released, the brand-new studio album by former Foreigner singer Lou Gramm, was actually decades in the making. It consists of unfinished music that the rocker had originally recorded around the time of his solo records, 1987’s Ready or Not and 1989’s Long Hard Look. “The ideas were half-baked,” Gramm says today, “and I ran out of time, and they've been sitting around for 25 years or more.”

But Gramm never forgot about those songs he was never able to complete. “When you do a new record, you want to write new things," he says. "But some of these songs just had the freshness and the attitude of something that was brand new. I just felt that I wanted to take these things out of the closet, out of the vault, and finish them.”

The result is a collection of 10 songs — a mixture of rockers and ballads he co-wrote with bassist Bruce Turgon — that carries the unmistakable sound and voice Gramm forged during his time with Foreigner. The musicians featured on Released (which came out last Friday) includes future Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell, bassist Tony Franklin and Gramm’s brother Ben on drums.

Asked if the archival songs underwent either major or minor updating for Released, Gramm says most of them required an additional verse. “I would write the first two verses and then make a judgment if it was going to be good enough for the record and stuff,” he says. “But a lot of them needed a third verse. A lot of them needed a lead guitar and probably some harmonies and maybe a tambourine. But even without that stuff, you could tell those songs had potential.”

The first single off Released, “Young Love,” is an anthemic rocker that easily recalls classic Foreigner. “It sounds like a song of desperation,” Gramm explains. “It drives. That's exactly what we wanted it to be. It's so much fun to sing as it was fun to record. We performed it for the first time about three nights ago [at a] Caribbean cruise. We played it for an audience, and they went crazy. It was so much fun.”

The gritty rocker “Long Hard Look” didn’t appear on its namesake 1989 album, but it has now seen the light of day on Released. “It has a powerful chorus. And I think the playing from all the band members and stuff was exemplary. As the song builds, as it goes along, it even becomes more powerful. We haven't played it live yet, but I can't wait to play it live.”

To die-hard Gramm fans, the recognizable and familiar song on Released is “True Blue Love,” which originally appeared on Long Hard Look as an uptempo rocker. On Released, it’s rendered as a predominantly acoustic piano version.

“Peter Wolf produced [the original “True Blue Love” for Long Hard Look],” Gramm says. “He had an orchestral arrangement with strings and the whole nine yards. And it was lush and beautiful. But upon thinking about it, I also always heard it stripped down with basically just percussion, a voice and a grand piano. So we decided to just do a remake of it. I thought it turned out great.”

Another single and standout from Released is the reflective and heartfelt “Time Heals the Pain,” which sees Gramm looking back on life. “It was just me starting to put thought into the fact that I was getting older and the things that are important in life have changed over the years… it was just a little bit of reminiscing.”

Gramm foray as a solo artist began with Ready or Not in 1987. “Those were fun times,” he recalls. "It was my first solo album. I was so thrilled to be at a point in my career where I could do that. The creativity was flowing, and we had my first solo album. It was just a lot of fun. And we worked very hard at it. I was very proud at that time."

The album yielded the exuberant and feel-good single “Midnight Blue,” his first Top 10 hit under Gramm’s name. “It's not a pounding song. It was just something very different from what I've done before. And the whole attitude of the song is pretty reckless and carefree. It just kind of wrote itself.”

He plans to perform songs from Released as well as his previous solo and Foreigner hits when he hits the road with his all-star group, whose lineup includes Ben Gramm, Tony Franklin, keyboardist Jeff Jacobs, saxophonist Scott Gilman and guitarist Gary Hoey. “I've got a great band,” he says. “These guys really bite down into the hits, and they're loving playing the new stuff, too.”

Gramm’s new album and upcoming live appearances this yeaer come as Foreigner is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the group’s formation — a legacy that included rock staples such as “Cold as Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “I Want to Know What Love Is,” along with an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.

“I’m incredibly proud of it, right from the word ‘go,’” Gramm says about that band. “I know we worked extremely hard to build the reputation and to maintain it. And I think all things aside, we did a great job. I'm very proud of our history.”

Given how the songs came out on Released after all this time, could there be more unreleased gems from Gramm that might be unveiled in the immediate future? “I know there's more tracks in the vault, and I haven't had a chance to listen to all of them yet,” he says. “But I think there's still some nuggets.”