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• Stream of Seal's new album, "Soul"
• Seal's official site
• Seal talks to the BBC
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Singer-songwriter explains why he so passionately recorded A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke for his latest album. (5:06)
 

Full interview. (21:05)
 

Tavis: I'm pleased to have Seal on the program tonight. The three-time Grammy winner has been a popular force in music for over 15 years now. His latest project is a collection of classic R&B songs called "Soul." In just a few minutes, he'll perform the Sam Cooke classic, "A Change Is Gonna Come," but first, here now some of the video for his version of Otis Redding's song, "I've Been Loving You Too Long."

[Clip]

Tavis: Seal, nice to have you on the program.

Seal: Nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

Tavis: You been all right?

Seal: I've been great, thank you.

Tavis: You were singing - at least, I could hear you sing while the trailer was running.

Seal: I was singing?

Tavis: You were singing along with the song and you were saying that you really love that song. Why you love that one so much?

Seal: Well, my mum used to be into Otis Redding. She really loved Otis Redding. I remember her playing that song around the house, as well as a lot of other songs, but I particularly love that one. I think in many ways it's kind of when I think of my own life and my relationship with my wife, it's pretty allegorical.

You know, there was a point in our relationship where, you know, I felt that I'd been loving her too long to stop. I drew upon that when I was singing the vocal in the studio. But I'm a huge fan of Otis Redding, period. I mean, I love his style, his approach to singing and I love his voice.

Tavis: I was listening to you as you were talking about the allegory that could be made between the song and your relationship with your wife. Each of us, whether we ever think about it, I think each of us, Seal, has a soundtrack to our lives.

There are songs that, when we hear them, they take us back. There are songs that have special meaning. Each of us has a soundtrack to our lives. How much of the stuff that you put on this record has to do with the anecdote you just shared about the role that these songs played in your life versus stuff that you just wanted to cover?

Seal: Well, pretty much I would say 80% or 85% of them form a soundtrack to my life. I mean, I remember when a lot of those songs came out. You know, I was a kid born in the '60s, in '63, and my mother who was a wigmaker. You know, she worked from home and she worked on a sewing machine.

Invariably, like any young Black woman in the '60s, you know, she'd have the radio on or at least some kind of music on out of which you would hear, you know, anything from the dulcet tones of Stevie Wonder singing "I Was Made To Love Her" to "Don't Forget About Me" by The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, lots of Dionne Warwick, you know.

So I remember a lot of these songs. Despite being born and raised in England, I was exposed to a lot of traditional R&B soul music. So without even kind of knowing it, they pretty much formed my DNA, you know, this beautiful sound that has come from this country.

So when it came to actually singing them, standing up at the microphone and singing those songs, I did feel a natural affinity with the music. It wasn't something that I had to, you know, force. Now obviously, these are some of the greatest songs of all time. You know, when you think about some of the songs that are on there and the artists that have performed them.

So that was a little intimidating, you know, because for the first time, for me in any case, I was doing a record where whoever who was gonna critique the album was not really gonna critique my songwriting, which is a whole different dynamic when you make a record, but they were gonna basically judge the record on two things, if you like, David's arrangements and my ability to sing these -

Tavis: - David Foster we're talking about, yeah.

Seal: Yeah, the great David Foster - and my ability to sing these songs and that was a pretty different experience for me.

Tavis: I want to come back to this dialectic of critiquing your songwriting versus critiquing your performance. I want to put a pin in that for just a second because I don't want to lose sight of this. I've interviewed thousands of folk over the years whose parents have done and been some of everybody and everything, but you are the first person to my knowledge who I've interviewed whose momma was a wigmaker (laughter).

Seal: (Laughter).

Tavis: Tell me about your momma. I want to hear more about your momma.

Seal: Well, she was Nigerian-born, moved to England in '62 and lived in Brixton, which is a predominantly Black area in London. She was a wigmaker. I remember her buying all this hair, you know, and she'd sit at the machine and weave these wigs and I'd be sitting under the machine listening to the radio and getting up to all kinds of mischief. But, you know, albeit a very short period in my life, but there are pretty fond memories I have.

Tavis: For persons who I know still engage in these conversations, who are still inquisitive about what it's like for an African to be raised in London -

Seal: - an Anglo African (laughter).

Tavis: Yeah, exactly (laughter). I'll take that. What was the experience like for you, being of Nigerian ancestry, raised in London?

Seal: Well, I would imagine - you know, obviously, I wasn't born here, so I can't say for sure. But I would imagine it was very, very different than if I were to have been born here because I think that the dynamic of how Black people actually came to England is very, very different from how they came here.

I would say that, you know, there was a lot less tension. I mean, was there a divisive tone or did I experience any kind of polarization? A little bit, you know, but nothing to the extent it would be here. If I was born here, I'd imagine there wasn't so much friction growing up being a Black man, you know, in England.

Tavis: The question I ask resonates with me now, Seal, in part because as I look at the CD, the song that you're gonna sing for us in a little bit is the first track on the CD, "A Change Is Gonna Come," of course, the Sam Cooke classic. My sense has always been - I shouldn't say always been. I grew into this philosophy.

My dear friend, Dr. Cornel West, and I debated this for years about whether in Black America, to your point, our advocates as in Dr. King, Malcolm, others versus our artists, who made the greatest contribution? Advocates or artists? It's an interesting debate, a complex debate.

Seal: It's a very interesting debate.

Tavis: But our artists, though. I've come to believe our artists really are the best representatives we have because they could say stuff in their music. They could express themselves and us in music in ways that we couldn't. When you think about our artists being the best we've produced, Sam Cooke and particularly this song, "A Change Is Gonna Come," comes to mind.

Seal: Well, it's a very interesting point and I think by no means could you kind of take for granted the efforts of someone like, you know, the late great Dr. King. But then music has this way of just infiltrating, for want of a better way. I mean, it can say things that wouldn't necessarily be that palatable if they were to be said by, let's say, a politician or a great leader.

It can say things in a different way. It can get into the mainstream and get into the bloodstream. It's almost like, you know, music is like being hooked up to an intravenous drip. It gets into you and you don't really have any control over it.

You know, I've often said that the great thing about music is that you don't really have to be able to understand the language that the person is singing in to understand that it's a love song because music has that quality. It's a direct link into the emotions. So I'd have to agree with you in some respects that the artists have had a real major role in getting a point across. Also, a testament to that is that I didn't intend making a "Soul" album full of covers at all.

What happened is, I was driving back from the wine country one night with my wife. The driver had the equivalent of what you might call a mixed tape except that it was a CD and he'd put this together. This is about 11 or 12 o'clock at night. Over the speakers came "A Change Is Gonna Come" and I literally was in floods of tears because I felt that, you know, there was this song that I'd heard a thousand times, we've all heard a thousand times, and, of course, it's one of the greatest songs ever written, ever sung.

But it resonated with me in such a way that it hadn't really done before because I really felt that here was a man, you know, some 45 or 50 years after his death singing, you know, "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die because I don't know what's up there beyond the sky. It's been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come."

I really felt that this was the voice of America. This is the voice of all the people around the world that just don't think they can be heard, that don't feel that they can make a difference or don't feel that they can change. That's really what compelled me to sing that. So I literally phoned up David Foster that night, real late at night, and I said, "David, I want to come in. I got to cover this song." He was like, "Yeah, sure." So I went to the studio the next day and sang the vocal and, in two days, we had the track.

Then I called up this young guy, Nabil Elderkin, who's a photographer whose work I was a fan of and I explained what kind of video that I wanted him to make to it. I gave him references like Otis Redding, Olive White, you know, circa 1960s. I want it to be really gritty, very monochromatic, one spotlight. I don't want there to be any frills, but I want it to be a really film mix. I want to get across a point for the reason being that, despite having lived in this great country for 19, almost 20 years now, I'm not a citizen, so I can't vote.

Which goes back to the point you were making earlier. I felt that the way that I could reach the people and the way that I could kind of offer some kind of support, if you like, was to sing this great song. Because I really felt that, in doing so, it would kind of send this message to the collective consciousness that, look, you're not alone. Change is really near. I mean, it's so near that we can taste it. Your voices are not falling on deaf ears. That was really the reason for doing it.

Then, of course, the record company heard it and David saw the video about two weeks later and he said, "You were made to sing these songs. We got to make a whole album full of this." That's really how - you know, which is very uncharacteristic of me, having two albums in the space of a year. My output is about one every five years.

Tavis: You take your time, to be nice about it (laughter).

Seal: I do take my time, I do take my time. You know, that's how this has come about. I mean, it's literally just taken off everywhere. We've got number one albums internationally. There's a number one album in France, which is really a first for me.

You know, I've had a few number one singles before, but I've never really had a number one album in a major territory. Then we got some news this morning that Belgians just followed. So I'm just kind of standing by. I'm like a bystander watching this whole thing spiral.

Tavis: That's what happens when you have a good voice and you match it with a timeless classic. That could happen.

Seal: Well, thank you.

Tavis: Let me go back to something you said a moment ago. Let me ask a question first. You don't have to answer this. Were you an Obama supporter? Were you supportive of Barack Obama?

Seal: You know what? I will answer this because I've been asked this many times before. I was a supporter of the people. Whatever happened, I wanted the people to be heard.

I wanted the people of this great country, the people who have inspired me when I was six, seven or eight standing in front of the TV watching American programs knowing that I had to get to this great country. Not knowing what it was I was watching as a child, but knowing that in order to achieve my dreams or make anything out of my life, I had to get to this place called America because this is the place where it all happened.

When I got here, which is about 19 years ago, and got picked up in a car that was bigger than any house I'd ever lived in, I realized that what I'd been aspiring to all this time was the thing that's known as the American Dream, the thing that didn't exist in my own country. So over the years, I've developed a love and a relationship with this country that has afforded me things that perhaps would have been really difficult to achieve in my own country.

Over the past eight years, I've watched that dream diminish and the argument that I've sustained as this being the greatest country in the world became increasingly more and more difficult to defend when I was traveling. So my support was for the people. I just wanted the people to be heard. I was an Obama supporter, very much so, but that was because I felt that he was the choice of the people.

Tavis: I accept that. The only reason why I ask, I could care less whether you are an Obama or McCain supporter. I only ask because I want to get back to your point which you've now addressed without even knowing my question, which is whether or not, given that you are not a citizen, you felt sort of left out of being involved in this historic moment because you can't vote.

Seal: No, I didn't feel left out and I'll tell you why. It's a fantastic question and I'm really glad that you asked that. I didn't feel left out because I felt it incumbent upon me to do something about it, to make my voice - excuse the pun - heard in one way or another because I have three American children. Despite not being born here, I do have three American children, so I have a vested interest in the future of this country.

I'm always gonna be fine. My wife's always gonna be fine, you know. But our children don't have that choice. Our children are born in this country. They are American citizens and my concern was what kind of America were they going to grow up in? Who was gonna to lead them?

A great thing happened. My wife, who isn't necessarily interested in politics at all - and neither was I, to tell you the honest truth, before any of this. But my wife who is even less interested in politics saw how captivated I was not necessarily by president-elect Obama - who I just think he is one of the greatest things to have happened to this country, by the way, and to the world - but how captivated I was by the moment.

I mean, you said it. I really felt that we were living in an historic period. I felt so lucky to be alive, to watch this paradigm shift, this balance of power change back into the hands of the people that really mattered, the people of this country, the future of this country. I saw the youth of this country inspired and motivated like I'd never seen before.

As a result of that, I became captivated by this whole election and she saw that. So what she did is, she applied for her citizenship and she did everything she could to rush it through. I have a picture, which I'm really upset that I didn't bring it with me because I would have shown it to you. She sent me a picture that she took on her Blackberry driving back from the ballots with a sticker saying, "I Voted."

Honestly, I mean, I don't think she will ever know how much that really meant to me. Of course, if she had voted for McCain, would I have been disappointed? I probably would have been a little bit bent out of shape, I'm not gonna lie to you, but that's only because I just didn't think that he was the right person for the job. That's the only reason. Nothing to do with anything else.

The fact that she knew how much it meant to me and how important I felt it was to take a stand, to take responsibility. It meant the world to me and that small thing that she did just - I mean, I can't tell you how moved I was. I was literally moved to tears when I got this picture.

Tavis: I could do this for hours, as you can imagine, talking to Seal, and the only reason why I'm gonna stop right now is because I want to hear him sing (laughter). Otherwise, I'd take the four minutes I have allotted him to perform to continue this rich dialogue. I'm going to quote Seal.

I'm on the lecture circuit all the time, Seal, as you might imagine, and I'm always quoting great people in my presentations. I'm now gonna add that philosopher, Seal, to my list of great quotes. I think the quote will go something like this: "Great leaders can speak to the mainstream, but music gets in your bloodstream."

Seal: I couldn't have said it better.

Tavis: Well, you did say it better (laughter). You did say it better. All right, let's let some of Seal into our bloodstream. His new project is called "Soul." He's gonna perform for us in a moment with his band "A Change Is Gonna Come" by the late great Sam Cooke. Seal, nice to have you on and you got to come back and continue this dialogue.

Seal: Thank you. I would love to.

Tavis: Come back any time.

Seal: I would love to.

Tavis: What you doing Monday night? No, I'm just teasing (laughter). Up next, Seal performs. Stay with us.

From his acclaimed new CD, "Soul," here is Seal with his band performing his version of the Sam Cooke classic, "A Change Is Gonna Come." Enjoy, good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.

[Performance]