Seal |
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Wed. August 13.2003 3:40 PM EDT |
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Seal: Endangered SpeciesThe charismatic singer returns with a disc that grooves to the sound of classic soul. He talks about his old videos, his favorite buildings, and how his car got stolen. by C. Bottomley |
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Seal (Publicity) |
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Seal was on top of the world. 1994's Kiss from a Rose, a ballad so delicate and timeless it sounded downright Elizabethan, had sat on top of the U.S. singles charts for 12 weeks. The singer had won three Grammys for the track, including Song of
Then it all went wrong. Seal calls 1998s Human Being the album that ten people bought. The tour to support the album, whose title track eulogized Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., was abruptly scrapped due to poor sales. The transplanted Londoner retreated to his Los Angeles home and began work on a new album. The only problem was, two years later, he still wasnt happy with the music hed made. To put it bluntly, it wasnt good enough, he remembers, so I scrapped it. I went back to England to try and rekindle that creative spirit and come up with something that bore some relevance to who I was. That shelved album was called Togetherland, and judging from leaked song titles like God Sits (At the End of Your Tongue), it might have been more than Seals fans were ready to take. They loved him for those powerful pipes and the canny dance/rock hybrid he had forged with producer Trevor Horn on hits like Crazy and Prayer for the Dying. Reunited with Horn, Seals new self-titled album finds him back on track. It opens with a surprising blast of R&B. Both Let Me Roll and Get It Together bounce with elastic rhythms, bright horn sections and the 40-year-olds trademark optimism. By the third track, Loves Divine, Seal is virtually prostrate as he testifies, Love is what I need to help me know my name. His sense of adventure leads him to flirt with reggae on the sweet Where Theres Gold, but heart and soul are sounds emphasized throughout the disc. And his public is responding. The epic techno anthem My Vision has gone top 10 in his native U.K. Of course, life wouldnt be a bowl of cherries without a few pits. While speaking with VH1, the hunky singer mentions that he recently had his car stolen. And clicking through a video resume on his ever-present laptop, he admits there are as many stinkers as memorable moments. Chatting away, Seal also rips into gymnastic singers, gives props to Rod Stewart, and names a few buildings that make him swoon. See Seal talk about Living in L.A., Working with Trevor Horn and Innervisions. VH1: How do you reach a point where you decide to scrap an entire album? Seal: Its quite simple. Im not like somebody who has millions of dance moves like Michael Jackson or Justin Timberlake. I am the guy that has this voice that people connect with. There is an emotional quality in my music that resonates with people. If theres no emotion or belief in the song or the delivery, then there is nothing. It was not the easiest reality to come to terms with, but it was one that I had to accept. VH1: Happy with the decision? S: Yes. I had a lot of help from the record company and my management. They were very cruel to be kind, but Im lucky they had faith in me as an artist. They knew that I hadnt suddenly forgotten how to sing or write songs. They knew I had to go off and find whatever it was that resonated with people in Seals music. VH1: Let Me Roll and Get It Together sounds like youre connecting with classic soul music. S: Trevor Horn once asked me, Why do you think it is that people like your music? I thought of myself as a songwriter, so I said, Because I write songs. He said, Yes, but the reason why people connect with your music is your voice. Youre preoccupied with not sounding like anybody else, but it doesnt matter what you sing. If you sing the phone book it will sound like you. I didnt want to hear that. When I received my Grammys for Kiss from a Rose, it was the Song of the Year award that made a huge difference to me [in particular], because someone was rewarding me for my emotions and experiences. But the reason you sense that deep-rooted R&B flavor is maybe because Ive taken Trevors advice. At this stage in my life, Im more comfortable with my ability to sing and not run the risk of sounding derivative. VH1: What voices make you believe in the songs that they sing? Seal: Bono can sing any song and he makes it his. Whether you like or dislike his music, Rod Stewarts voice is so distinctive; whatever he sings becomes his song. I dont really care how many notes you can sing; I find that about as interesting as a slap in the face. There tends to be this whole genre of what I call vocal gymnastic singers who sing every single note apart from the melody. I think the reason a lot of them do it is because they dont have particularly distinctive voices, so theres a lot of smoke and mirrors to hide that fact. The voices that have always turned me on were people like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. Im interested in tone, and the emotion and the biography behind that voice. Those are the things that I aspired to when I was trying to find my voice as a singer. VH1: Is Where Theres Gold your first attempt at a reggae tune? S: At the school that I went to, if you were black and you didnt like reggae, you were in trouble. My father idolized Bob Marley, so we had every Bob Marley and Peter Tosh record. Reggae was a very integral part of my musical education going through my teens. Ive always dabbled with it; Ive just never done anything that has made it to one of my records. Theres even a reggae version of Love Divine! VH1: You graduated from college with an architectural degree. Do you have a favorite building? Seal: Frank Gehrys Guggenheim building in Bilbao is one of my favorites. More locally, Id say Frank Lloyd Wrights Hollyhock House on Hollywood Boulevard. Its beautiful. It looks like a cross between an Egyptian pyramid and a fortress. VH1: VH1.com has posted an online retrospective of your videos. Any one you wish you had never made? Seal: The one directed by Matthew Rolston for Kiss from a Rose was a hideous video. Its forever been a thorn in my professional side. Its probably up there with the worst videos Ive ever seen, but it was one of those situations where I completely trusted the director. He convinced me to recreate the movie Blow Up, and play the David Hemmings character, this 60s photographer who had all these adoring women [around him]. The character was a bit of a bastard. Honestly, I didnt feel comfortable. When I looked at the video it was such a misrepresentation of anything remotely to do with who I am. VH1: Youre lucky. We only have the Batman version of the video up on the site. Seal: Ive got my computer right in front of me; let me have a quick look at the others. The Beginning, that was a bit iffy. Killer, that was a bit dodgy too. Crazy is good. Future Love Paradise, okay. Prayer for The Dying, one of my favorites. Dont Cry, I liked that one. Newborn Friend, I quite like that. Human Beings & Francis Lawrence did that and I really like that video. Not necessarily the most commercial video but, in terms of my integrity and what I was trying to say, I love it. VH1: You have been very online savvy. Whats your homepage? Seal: My homepage is Yahoo. It gives me all my relevant, pertinent, personalized information at a moments notice. One of the best designed websites I ever visited was for the Xpan camera by Hasselblad. To me it personifies a great website. Its really simple: minimal, not obnoxious use of flash. Great navigation, simplicity, superb use of music - those are the things I look for in a website. VH1: The song Tinsel Town casts a jaundiced eye on Hollywood. Do you have mixed feelings about L.A.? Seal: No. Los Angeles is a great place. I came here 13 years ago in search of the American dream. The Los Angelinos helped me achieve that. They embraced me and the type of music I was producing. I guess that Los Angeles is not a real city for me. Its like a group of suburbs that have come together somehow to form this city, but its not a real city like London or New York. VH1: What do you miss most about Los Angeles when youre in London? Seal: Being able to have nice things and not have people resent you for it. Im so happy to be back in London, but two months after being there, I get woken up at 4:30 in the morning by a police officer. He says, Excuse me, sir. Is that your car outside? And I say, Yes. Well your wheels have been stolen. I wake up at 4:30 in the morning in the rich and affluent neighborhood of Chelsea to find my Mercedes SL 55 on bricks! I lived in Los Angeles for 13 years. I drove through and got lost, I might I add, in Compton. I never so much had my windows scratched. I moved to London and I find my car on bricks! My only regret is that I actually didnt take a picture of it so I could post it on the Internet. Its comical, right? VH1: That sucks. Seal: I came back to Los Angeles two and a half weeks ago. The day I left I got a phone call at 10:30 at night Los Angeles time from my brother, who I left looking after my dog in London. He said, Seal, did you park the car in the garage before you left? I said, No. He said, Oh my God! Your car has been stolen! So they stole the wheels and then came back to get the car! |
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