It was 30 years ago, on May 23, 1994, that British singer-songwriter Seal released his sophomore album. While his 1991 self-titled debut had gone platinum in the U.S. on the strength of the top 10 hit "Crazy" (which he just performed on the Season 22 American Idol finale), it was a track on Seal II, "Kiss From a Rose," that made him a superstar.
But the sentimental ballad, which was a departure from the edgier electronic sound of Seal's earlier singles, almost didn't come out at all.
"Funnily enough, I didn't really care for the song much when I wrote it," Seal, whose full name is Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, admits to Music Times. "And I actually wrote it [in 1987], way before I ever got signed. I wrote it as an experiment, when I was trying to learn a piece of musical equipment. I was listening to lots of Zeppelin and Hendrix at the time, so I just thought it was a bit too soft for my liking. But a friend of mine, Paul, heard it, and when I eventually got signed a few years later, he told my producer, Trevor, 'Seal's got this rose song.' Trevor asked to hear it — and I wouldn't play it for him! I said, 'No, no, Paul doesn't know what he's talking about.' Which is why it never ended up on the first album, because I wouldn't play it to anyone."
The Trevor in question was the legendary Trevor Horn. Horn was a member of the short-lived but seminal synthpop band the Buggles and went on to architect the sound of the '80s as a producer for ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, Spandau Ballet, Malcolm McLaren, Yes, and his producers' supergroup, the Art of Noise. Horn then established his longest-running creative partnership with Seal in 1990, upon the recommendation of his wife and ZTT Records co-founder, Jill Sinclair, who'd been looking for a "modern-day Nat King Cole."
After the success of their first album collaboration, Horn and Seal commenced work on the follow-up, and Seal recalls, "Trevor kept pestering me. He said, 'What is this rose song that Paul keeps telling me about it?' And I went, 'OK, OK.' I sang it to him and he said, 'Just go behind the mic and sing those parts down.' And because when I wrote it, I couldn't play an instrument, I used my voice to do all the orchestration. So, what the strings would be doing, the cellos would be doing, the brass, the drums, I sang all the parts: 'Ba-ya-ya, ba-da-da-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya...' I spent about an hour singing all the different parts, and then I went away. And a few days later, Trevor had made a record! He said he'd gotten an arrangement done for it and made a record. ... And he said, 'Now, go sing the lead vocal again.' And I sang it — and I still didn't like it!"
Horn told Music Times' Lyndsey Parker in 2023, when his revamped Buggles lineup opened for Seal on a tour celebrating Seal and Seal II, that Seal's record label and ZTT's distributor, Sire/Warner, also had reservations about the ballad. "'Kiss From a Rose" wasn't an easy one, because I think a lot of people at the label thought that I'd done it in too organic a way and that somehow it should have been more techno-y," explained Horn. "Obviously, there was nothing techno about "Kiss From a Rose.'"
"Kiss From a Rose" wasn't a hit straight away. The first single from Seal II was "Prayer for the Dying," which peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Kiss" went to radio in July 1994 after it was featured in The NeverEnding Story III. The song stalled at No. 20 at that time, and it was only when it was re-released a year later, on the soundtrack for another, much more successful fantasy film, that it became Seal's unexpected, unintentional signature song. Thirty years later, it remains his power, his pleasure, his pain.
"And then Joel Schumacher put it in a movie called Batman Forever — and three Grammys and 8 million album sales later, I finally like it," Seal chuckles.
And so, that long-shelved "rose song," now known as the "love theme from Batman Forever," won Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 1996 Grammy Awards, beating out nominees like Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Sting. It went to No. 1 in 21 countries, including the United States, and it stayed in the top spot of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart for a whopping 12 weeks (even if Seal once bristled at the idea of being a Hot AC star). Seal II eventually sold 4 million copies in the U.S. alone.
As for Paul Mavarates, the above-mentioned best friend who believed in "Kiss From a Rose" from the beginning, Seal says somberly, "He's no longer with us, God rest his soul. Well, he's with us, but he's no longer in this dimension, I should say. But yeah, he was the guy. He championed that song. So, I owe him a lot."
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