This was 1987, nearly a decade before the song reached #1. During that stretch of time, he wrote and recorded the first version of “Kiss From A Rose” on a four-track recorder.
Seal didn’t think of himself as a musician, but a music teacher and a girlfriend both encouraged him after hearing him sing.Įventually, Seal started recording demos, but labels weren’t interested. When Seal was 17, his father died, and he moved into a squat, living there while studying architecture.
Seal’s father was abusive, and his scars come from a rare version of lupus that he contracted as a young man. (When Seal was born, the #1 song in America was Paul & Paula’s “ Hey Paula.”) Seal spent part of his childhood with a foster family before being returned to his parents. Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel was born in London, the son of a Nigerian mother and a Brazilian father. Over his career, Seal has only notched one week atop the Hot 100, but that’s been enough to give him his own dreamlike presence in our cultural imagination. Seal’s trip to the top of the American charts was a long, complicated one. “Kiss From A Rose” is an unearthly song, and a big part of its strange, uncanny vibe is the particular gravitas of Seal himself, a man so beautiful that he makes intense facial scars look sexy.
