Word: sealing
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Since his previous album came out in 1994, Seal has gone through two difficult breakups--one with supermodel Tyra Banks and another with a woman he won't name--and the experiences provided emotional fuel for his new CD. The latter relationship was a particularly tumultuous one. "My life and work were being destroyed by this one person," says Seal. "She was jealous beyond conception. I tried to meet that with love until I got to the point where I was up against the wall." Lovers' quarrels are the opposite of high school debates; it is only afterward that both...
...debut, Seal, focused on inventive and thoughtful dance-pop and spawned uptempo hits like Crazy and Killer. His second album, also inscrutably titled Seal, offered up intricate pop hymns, such as Kiss from a Rose and Don't Cry. The new album is not a break from his past work but a stately evolution deftly combining the throbbing power of his first album with the smart sophistication of his second. "I wanted to make a more raw record," he says. "Not as produced. I wanted to make sure that it was more open, more from the heart." Human Being...
Striving for timelessness can take time, and the recording process was a long, arduous one. Horn signed on to the project, was pushed off of it while Seal explored his options with two other producers, and then was invited back to finish the record. "[Seal] got a bit manic with the whole thing," says Horn. "He was going through a fair amount of turmoil as we started working. By the end of the record it was like having an old friend back. Taking people, calling them a star, it screws people's heads up. It did change him a little...
...struggles were worth it; Seal has grown as a writer and a performer. His vocals, always strong, are now more nuanced and expressive. On the low-key breakup song, No Easy Way, he is aching and vulnerable; on the expansive When a Man Is Wrong, he is charismatic and commanding. Seal can sound mythic and virile and optimistic and lost and loving all in the same song. Yet he never oversings his compositions; he feels the spirit but is never ruled...
Although love is his main subject on Human Being, it is not his only one. The gentle Colours imagines a world without race and asks the question, Would people still be able to find a way and a reason to discriminate? The song was inspired by a trip Seal took to Monte Carlo two years ago. The city was filled with wealthy whites, and the only other person of color he saw was a black street cleaner. The opening track, Human Beings, also deals with a weighty theme: partly inspired by the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious...