[7][8] Eventually, things fell apart around the time of the Christmas holidays when Foreigner had joined him in England to resume the recording: Horn soon backed out of the project, feeling that he and the band were heading in different directions and that it was not going to work out.

[7][8][9][10] In hindsight, the band recognised that Horn's production style wasn't really suited to their music, according to drummer Dennis Elliott: "he tried to make us more electronic than we wanted to be".

[9] Eventually, another month was spent trying to look for another producer to fill his shoes, subsequently hiring Alex Sadkin, who was busy finishing the Thompson Twins' Into the Gap album.

[8][11] Sadkin helped rekindle the project when it was on the verge of total collapse, but despite that, according to Jones, recording still never seemed to end: the sessions had been dogged from the very start and continued to remain unfocused.

A review in Creem read: "On this, their latest excursion into the gaping jaws of pulverizing mediocrity, our boys continue to wrestle with an all-too-turgid identity crisis — they still can't decide whether it's stupider to aspire to poor man's Led Zep status or settle for being a weightier version of Chicago.

"[15] Ultimate Classic Rock critic Eduardo Rivadavia rated "A Love in Vain" as Foreigner's fifth-most underrated song, calling it a "synth-powered cry of desperation" and a "dark-horse favorite of fans.

"[16] Classic Rock critic Malcolm Dome rated two songs from Agent Provocateur as being among Foreigner's 10 most underrated – "Stranger in My Own House" at #6 and "Tooth and Nail" – which he describes as "the antidote to 'I Want to Know What Love Is'" – at #2.