Soul Singer Seal Seduces With Melodies
The voice is dark, smoky and thick, at once reassuring and hinting at danger, coiled and ready to spring. With British soul singer Seal, it rarely does.
The lyrics are ambiguous, alluding to larger themes and big emotions but more often suggesting stream of consciousness or choices made for sound rather than meaning. Even “Prayer For The Dying,” a song most apparently about AIDS, rambles on: “Fearless people/careless needle/harsh words spoken/ and lives are broken/forceful angel/help me, I’m fading.” And when the words are clear enough, the delivery seems designed to confound the purpose.
“Live for today” is the refrain of his song “Bring it On” - but the tone is ominous, not festive. The melodies are seductive but not memorable. The beat suggests techno-soul; the overall sound is lush, at once etched with almost subliminal detail yet spacious. Even the imagery is equivocal.
Tall and muscular, born and raised in Britain of Nigerian parentage, Seal (born Sealhenry Samuel), has some facial scars that have been mistaken as tribal markings. They are not. They are the traces of a skin disease.
Seal has shaped two very successful albums - one released in 1991, the other in 1994, both titled “Seal,” both produced by Trevor Horn, the man behind Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Yes.
Seal also has built a budding career based on blurry paradoxes. Some of it, he admits, is by design. He doesn’t print the lyrics in the inner sleeve of his albums or talk much about their meaning, he said in an interview with Detour Magazine last year, because, “My songs mean one thing to me and another to the listener. But that’s OK, because I think it’s the general vibe of what I’m saying that is important and not the exact literal translation.”
His success has proven him right.
He studied architecture awhile (“to please my parents”) and electrical engineering, but by his early 20s, he had dropped out of school and taken work as a cutter for a leather manufacturer.
Eventually, with Adamski, a disc jockeyperformer-keyboardist, he had his first No. 1 hit on Britain’s club charts in 1990 with “Killer.” He struck out on his own with “Crazy,” an astute blend of groove and mood from his first album, a song that made the Top 10 in 16 countries. Then in 1992 at the Brits Awards, the British version of the Grammys, he took three awards, including best album, best male artist and best video. That year he was nominated for two Grammys (best Pop Male Vocal and Best New Artist) and performed in the show. This year, he was nominated for Grammy categories as the pop male vocalist and album of the year (for his second album).
The secret might be that “there is almost a sense of therapy in the music,” Seal once said. “That’s why most of my songs have a positive tone … even things that might sound melancholy. If you listen to them enough, you’ll see hope in them.”