Seal

  • British musician/songwriter born Seal Samuel Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel in 1963 in London.
  • Seal’s mother is Nigerian, and his father is Brazilian. His first and middle names are from the Yoruba language spoken in West Africa.
  • In the 80s, he sang in clubs and later joined a funk band, and then a blues band. In 1988, he sang vocals on the song Superfly Guy by the British dance group S’Express. This gave him exposure, which led to a collaboration with Adamski on the 1990 dance song Killer, which hit #1 in the UK.
  • Based on the success of Killer, Seal was signed to a record deal, and his debut album, the self titled Seal, was released in 1991. The album was very popular throughout Europe, and peaked at #27 in the U.S. The song Crazy made Seal an International star. It was inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre. It has a powerful vocal, soulful and sometime soaring.
  • His second album, Seal II, released in 1994, was modestly successful. The single Kiss from a Rose initially was popular, but when a remixed version was included in the Batman Forever film soundtrack, it became a huge success, hitting #1 on the Hot 100 chart, and winning 3 Grammy awards.
  • Later albums were less successful, though 2003’s Seal IV peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 album chart and 3 singles hit #1 on the Dance Songs chart.
  • In total, Seal has released 9 studio albums, 2 live albums and 28 singles. He was a featured artist in Herbie Hancock’s 2010 cover of John Lennon’s Imagine, which won a Grammy award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
  • Seal was married to supermodel Heidi Klum for 7 years. They divorced in 2014 amicably. The couple made many “beautiful women who married less-than-beautiful men” lists.
  • The first time I heard the song Crazy, I knew I had to buy the CD of the album. It sounded so unique – just a cool song. It still gets some airplay on classic rock stations. Take a look at the music video – kinda weird in a 90s kinda way.

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