Sunday Conversation: Seal On Life, Love, Music And Connection

Sometimes an experience just speaks for itself and following the idea less is more, I want to say as little as possible about the beautiful. moving experience it is to have a conversation with Seal and let his words speak. Part philosopher, part poet, a total artist, Seal has a view and a perspective that is almost mystical in its beauty.

So, for the intro I will say this, go see Seal on the upcoming thirtieth anniversary tour he is doing celebrating his breakthrough first two albums, 1991's Seal and 1994's Seal (known as Seal II so as not to be mixed up with the first album). It will be a phenomenal show from a great artist.

But the true genius of Seal is his approach to life as Sage Bava and I found out during an insanely moving and powerful hour long conversation we had with a true poet/philosopher/artist.

Steve Baltin: I think about those artists who are able to live that public life while at the same time being so authentic to themselves and being able to be themselves while being a musician. So who are those artists that you admire that?

Seal: The person who had a large influence on me from an artistic perspective was probably Prince and he's an interesting one because of course he's mixed and so he had this ability to appeal to a great cross section of people. But in terms of who did I look to as an artist, who do I still look to as an artist? What I believe is my primary function as an artist is to connect people and in connecting people with themselves or allowing them to connect with themselves by doing that through music I'm subsequently presenting the opportunity to connect with each other. The artist who I feel does that in an amazing way is Bono. And the reason I say that is not necessarily because I believe in any of his kind of off the court endeavors and causes, although I don't disagree with them. But that's not why, is I look at him and he, for me, personifies what an artist is supposed to do with their payment fortune. I think they're the greatest rock band of all time, personally. I think Achtung Baby is the greatest rock n roll album of all time in true essence of what that philosophy rock n roll is supposed to be. More of an attitude than a sound and an attitude that encompasses aggression, humor, irony all of those things, I think Achtung Baby is that album. And I think U2, and specifically Bono. I think he's brilliant as an artist, but his off the court endeavors and what he has used his platform to bring attention to. He is somebody I admire and who, if I could do a fraction of what he's done, I'd consider my career a success.

Sage Bava: You spoke earlier on the importance of your platform as a catapult for the message, and then you said it's to connect people. When did you discover that clear intention behind the music and the art that you make? Because it's also within the album art, you see it within everything you do. When did you define that as your intention of what your message is?

Seal: That's an interesting way of putting it. 'Cause when did I define it? I couldn't answer that question, but when did I first become aware of, "Oh, that's what it is I'm supposed to do." Becoming conscious of this thing about connecting. There was a woman who has since passed on, Jill Sinclair was her name. She was the late wife of my producer, Trevor Horn. And she signed me to my record deal in London. And she was a very powerful woman in a business that was run predominantly by men. So she was disliked a lot and she was feared by some others, but respected by all 'cause she was hardcore. And she and I had a very unique relationship. She signed me and I could do no wrong in her eyes and vice versa. We were extremely close. She's the kind of person that she would come into the studio when Trevor was mixing some of the records and she would say things and he would be playing her this beautiful mix. It was great and her comment would be like, "Turn it up. Where's his voice? I can't hear him. I didn't pay all this money to have him buried in your mix." So that was Jill. She was my biggest fan and I just adored her. And similarly if I did any kind of a performance or whether it be like a concert or TV, hers and Trevor's, but mainly hers, that was the opinion that I really cared about. Okay. So we had used to have this show in England called Top of the Pops. It was a weekly TV show back before the internet. And if you were on that show, you had made it 'cause the whole country watched that show each week. So my first performance on Top of the Pops was of a song called "Crazy." And we went and recorded that song during the day. And we came back to the recording studio/record company to watch the performance in the evening. So all of the engineers and house engineers and people in admin from the record company, We gathered round the TV to watch this performance, it came on and after, everyone clapped and was, "Oh, it's great." And Jill was walking downstairs to the basement corridor through to the kitchen at Sam's Studios. I followed her into the kitchen and I said, "Well?" 'Cause hers was the only opinion that I wanted to hear. And she said in her Jill-like way, she went, "Oh, it was good." And I went, "Yeah, Jill, good, but that's not great. Good." And she goes, "You haven't connected yet." And I go, "Well, how do you connect?" And she said to me, which is perhaps maybe the most profound and effective few words that anyone has ever said to me as it relates to my career, she said, "Oh, you'll just know it when you do." So I kind of left frustrated. Anyway, about a year, two years later, I was on stage somewhere performing at a concert and I had my eyes closed and I was lost on stage, lost in the music, and I opened my eyes and there was this one person in the audience that I just kind of locked on and they were looking at me and they almost had tears in their eyes. And, it sounds corny, but it was like that scene in a movie, like I was singing to that one person. And that was the only person that existed in that moment on stage. We connected and our souls connected. And that was the first experience I had, where I understood that the purpose of all of it, of why I had this voice, why all this had been given to me. And that has never left until this day. My primary objective when performing, when talking with people, when anything, is to connect, more so than anything else. And when I say connect, I don't just mean connecting with that person. I actually more often mean connecting with myself and given that person the ability or reminding that person of the ability to connect with themselves. And so walking out on stage, it's more so than thinking about my voice, thinking about the songs I'm going to sing. I am trying to connect and therefore relinquish control of everything. I am trying to connect with myself. Because I think that when we do that, that's when wonder happens. That's when everything makes sense. And that's when we're left to our essential devices. That's when we are most beautiful.

Baltin: Can you think of a moment then for you where you connected that you learned the most about yourself?

Seal: I will share something with you that I haven't shared before. I just had my sixtieth birthday and what we were going to do, my Mrs and I and my stepdaughter, we were gonna go to the Alps. I feel most alive when I'm in the mountains. I love cold weather, I love snow. I have some great friends there. Also, my family who live for the most part, who live in England, my brothers and sisters and my mom, they would be able to kind of come to the Alps. It was a tossup between that and Whistler in Canada, which is another favorite place of mine. So we ended up going to Whistler. We were about to leave for Whistler two Fridays ago. So on a Thursday, my Mrs, she says to me, "What are you doing this evening around four o'clock?" And I said, "Oh, I was gonna do some music, but yada yada, but I'm gonna play some tennis first." And she goes, "Well, can I grab you for a bit?" So I figured we were going to go to dinner or something, which I should have suspected then, because we'd been to dinner two nights, the previous two nights out to dinner. Anyway, we went to this friend's house to pick up my stepdaughter. And the door opened and there were about 200 of everyone that had defined my life. "Surprise." My sister was there, my manager, who I hadn't seen in 18 years, Rob Cavallo, who was largely instrumental in the success of "Kiss From a Rose," used to be Prince's manager. My doctor, who I've known for 28 years, Guru Singh, my spiritual guide, Shepherd, teacher. My beloved housekeeper, Lorena, who is the daughter of my sister Lucia, who is born on the same day as me, same year, so we have a very special connection. I saw them all there, and they all sang "Happy Birthday." There was a couple, Megan and Kevin from Oklahoma, and this is a couple that I found on YouTube because I'm a tennis fanatic, and I was following his tutorial. I ended up hiring them both, and they came out and coached, and we got on so well, and they came out again last year with their son, Laken, who I just adored this little kid. And so they were there, and it was when I saw them, I just lost it. I lost it. I was uncontrollably crying. And then when I saw Cavallo, my manager, who I hadn't seen for 18 years, he came up to me and embraced me, and I just wept like a baby on his shoulder. And the reason being is we're all really good at deflecting love when it comes our way, right? When someone pays you a compliment or says they love you. We're really good at finding excuses to say, "Well, I'm not really worthy of that." But then seeing all of these people there, seeing from the people I'd mentioned, also Kevin and Megan, dressed to the nines with these huge smiles on their faces. And it was, when I saw all of these people, I went, "Okay, well, there's only one reason why all of these people could be here. It's because they love you and because they care." I was looking out and I saw everyone, both people I knew very well, and people I knew not so well but had struck a connection with. They were all there and I couldn't figure out why they were all there apart from one reason. They were there because they cared. And again, we are really good at deflecting all of that. But this was an overwhelming wall of love and it's almost like love was saying, "No, you will listen." And that's when I broke down. I literally, I was crying for the whole night but for the first hour, I just could not control. And it's interesting because your question, when did I feel that connection? Well, I ended up saying to everyone, "I don't know if they will ever really understand what they did for me that night, apart from just turning up." What they did is something which went a long way into healing a part of me that has been broken for many years because it was so undeniable and because I couldn't deflect it as we're all want to do, that I just had to accept this love. I had to accept that I was worthy of being loved to that degree. The funny thing is, at one point, I went, "Oh my God, I know what's happened. I know what's happened. I've died, I've died." And this is, oh my God, this is what happens when you die." It was all there. And that I don't think I have ever felt that connected in my entire life. And that connection you feel, yes, with everyone else, of course. But that connection you feel with yourself as a result of an undeniable, overwhelming wall of love that you cannot deflect. I couldn't pass it on 'cause it's uncomfortable to feel that degree of love. But it was amazing. I ended up writing this song, which you no doubt hear at somewhere, called "Love Wins."

Bava: That was so beautiful, Seal. We had a conversation with Taj Mahal a couple of weeks ago, and he spoke on how the most important thing for him as a musician is to always keep his connection. What would be your words of wisdom in how people can find that for themselves beside music?

Seal: Love again. I know it sounds like a very general response, but we have to find a way. I used an expression before, I think I said, to get back to the garden. I think that's where we come from. If I look at essentially what we are and where we come from, I remember when, Leni, my first child was born and I remember when she came out. And they're free of everything. They're free of fear, prejudice, anger, sadness, any of those kind of social constructs that we humans are subject to. But the one thing that was present undeniably from that jump is this love. It's there from day one. And it is a connection that you have with them. And so it led me to really understand that that in essence is who we are. And what happens is we go through this, I believe personally, this is my own personal belief, that we are these highly evolved beings that exist wherever. And that we come into this life, this human form. And I believe that the point of it is to gather as much information about love as we can and as much understanding of it as we can before we have to kind of bail and go back again. And then we decide whether we have enough or something decides whether we have enough. And then eventually that I believe that we become it. This oneness that everyone talks about, this infinite oneness that religions talk about and philosophies talk about, certain philosophies. This oneness. I believe that this divine oneness is this thing that is love because it's the only thing that whenever I have leaned in with love, whenever I have come from a place of love, I have never ever been mistaken. It has never been an incorrect move. Even though sometimes it can trick you and make you think it, you've made a bad choice, but it never really is. You wait long enough and you realize it's always, and it's always what inherently, innately feels right, when I come from a place of love. And so when the baby is born, whether it's a pet animal, human, that thing is present right from the get-go and you feel it. And I think that what happens is we go through this journey and, by design, we get further and further and further and further away from it. And all of these other things come into play. But it's only because we're trying to understand. And we've got to somehow find a way of getting back to that before we pass on, before we leave. And you see it in our parents, our grandparents, less of the small stuff becomes important. And they start gravitating towards this infancy of love. We gravitate more back towards it. And so to answer your question, if there's anything that I could, any words of advice, I hesitate to use the word wisdom, but if there's any words of advice that I could give someone based on my own experience musically, professionally, personally, spiritually it is that we have got to find a way to just lean in with love. To simplify it is try and come from a place of love. Leaning in with love I never regret. And it's the one thing that feels inherently right, it feels right whenever I can approach any situation or any person with love. So my advice is we've got to find a way to come from that. It's here. It's not outside. And I believe that that journey starts with a love of the self because it's not possible for me to lean in with love fully until I love myself. And that is why I said what I said to those people that were there. I said, "What you have done for me today has gone a long way into healing a part of me that has been broken for a while." And so it starts with the love of the self. And then I think it's easier to kind of love to lean in with love with everyone and everything.

Baltin: When the hell are you going to write a book? Because as we're listening to this, all I want to do is read your book.

Seal: With the advent of AI, perhaps sooner rather than later. I think AI is a fascinating point in our evolution. But I think it's a question of understanding how to use it. I'll leave you with this. So the answer, the short answer is sooner rather than later. I think I should write a book. I am doing something that is a kind of the story of my life through photographs and conversations. So I guess that is kind of a book,