Seal released his seventh album a year or two ago. I thought I would give it a chance, to see if pop still has anything to offer. His voice still sounds really great, ironically sounding like a black version of Huey Lewis. There is real passion in his voice (song 6, The Big Love Died, is the best track and it is a downer), which is unfortunately held back by the overly smooth pop music which backs him. There is too much major key synthesizer parts throughout. And the bass is not interesting enough, and sounds too programmed. One truly terrible song called ‘Life on the Dance Floor’ is entirely hard to relate to, and I wish had been cut out of the album. Overall, Seal still proves that his voice is better than other pop artists who have overshadowed him since the 90s, like Bieber and Swift etc.
The sincerity in Seal’s voice , as well as the smoothe mid range timbre of his voice , are his best qualities. His lyrics keep it real, mostly about relationships, and it seems like he sings from personal experience, rather than from fantasy. So there is a poetic maturity to his lyrical content. What Seal needs to do is change the background music to something much more blues oriented, preferably with Chicago blues musicians. But he should do a more up-tempo blues jam album next.