Sealed with a Kiss

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Zzzzzzzarrrrrrrzzzzzzarrrrr! The soul-rock singer Seal is mixing himself a weird-looking drink. It's a pale-green health-food shake that's not entirely dissimilar in color and consistency to what one imagines might be found growing on the side of a transatlantic ocean liner. ZZZZZarrrrr! The sound of the electric blender mixing this concoction fills Seal's roomy Manhattan hotel suite, making conversation impossible. He adds a few vitamins to the sludge. ZZZZZZZarrrrr! Finally, the shake is done. It has the quality of primordial ooze; you half expect creatures part fish, part mammal to crawl up out of it, looking to evolve their fins into limbs. Seal pours himself a massive mug of this substance and sits down to talk. He never says precisely what's in the shake nor does he offer a sip to his guests. He's not being rude. He's just being Seal.

The 35-year-old singer is a man of mysteries, both tiny and large. He goes by Seal professionally, but his real name is Sealhenry Olumide Samuel. In person he is tall, sleekly muscular and imposingly handsome, with a clean-shaven head and sloped, piercing eyes; his cheeks, however, are rough and pocked, the result of a long-ago lupus episode (something else he prefers not to discuss). Nor is he always comfortable talking about his parents. (His mother was Nigerian and his father Brazilian; both are dead.) Seal was born in London and grew up poor. He was put up for adoption and then reclaimed by his father; at one point when Seal was in his late teens, he was homeless. Today he projects both stylishness and erudition. There's a cool air about him that from time to time suggests he may have just breezed in from the hottest dance club in town or may have spent the night paging through Byron's collected works. Your call.

But the most mysteriously interesting thing about Seal is that despite the turmoils and tragedies of his life, he is a resolute champion of romance and an unshakable believer in the power of love. His magnificent new album, Human Being (due out from Warner Records on Nov. 17), focuses on love in all its many-splendored forms: self-love, angry love, impossible love, the start of love, the ashes of love. Seal explores the emotion and its many isotopes not in a sappy baby-won't-you-please-come-back sort of way, but with elegance and eloquence. Pop music can be clumsy and obvious, revealing all at first listen. Seal's music invites analysis, rewards exploration, and yields its secrets slowly and sweetly.

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 sides really figure out where they stand. So, in the end, both of Seal's soured relationships helped him sort out his values. Says he: "I had a course in the meaning of love: what it meant to me and what I wanted from life."

His 1991 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, co-produced by Seal's longtime collaborator Trevor Horn, draws on soul, folk, rock and even a bit from drum 'n' bass to create a sound that's personal and purposeful. Says Seal: "I'm constantly searching for a sound that can become timeless."

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 bit."

The 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 by it.

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 B.I.G., the song ruminates on death, self-esteem and fame.

Hailing from mean streets himself, Seal grows passionate when talking about gangsta rap. "There are millions and millions of kids in the ghetto who just want to get out," he says. "And then they see their idols like B.I.G. and Tupac who do get out and what do they do? They make videos of loads of women in Jacuzzis and scantily clad and refer to them as ho's, taking the whole ghetto life and glorifying it and showing that this is what you have to aspire to. People that glorify this kind of life-style don't love themselves."

Seal is more comfortable in his skin, in his music and in his life than he's ever been; he's more willing to share some of his secrets. At a recent concert in New York City's Radio City Music Hall, Seal's band was tight, his voice was sure, and the crowd was his. His new lyrics can be downbeat: "I lost my faith/long ago," he sings on one song; on another he admits, "I can't seem to find my state of grace." But such seeming pessimism is delivered with a sense of release and relief; in singing about his feelings and anxieties, Seal transcends them.

In creating this album, he says, "I learned many things about myself that I wasn't sure of before. I used to think there was this answer, and I had to figure it out--this unobtainable thing, like 'Where am I going?' I'm O.K. now with not knowing." Wherever Seal is headed, Human Being proves he's worth following.

--Reported by David E. Thigpen/New York

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York