'Kiss From a Rose': How Batman turned Seal's 'very odd song' into a massive hit

The Grammy-winning global legend known as Seal has been asked how it feels to be launching a 30th anniversary tour in Phoenix, performing the self-titled albums that made him a star while spinning off his biggest hits, "Crazy" and "Kiss From a Rose."

"First of all, I'm happy that I'm still alive," he replies with a smile.

"Every day above ground is a win as far as I'm concerned. I remember when I never used to speak to people who were over the age of 30. Now, I sit here at the ripe old age of 60 and I just feel fortunate to be doing the thing I love to do and to still be able to do it with gusto and enthusiasm and physical ability."

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Seal is thrilled to be touring with Trevor Horn of the Buggles and Yes

He's also doing it with Trevor Horn as musical director, which has somehow never happened before now.

Horn produced both albums Seal intends to spotlight on this tour and three more albums after that. And Seal is absolutely thrilled to have him out there, opening the shows with his own band, the Buggles of "Video Killed the Radio Star" fame.

"Not only do you get his expertise, but what you get is all those years, the last 33 years that we've spent in each other's hip pocket," Seal enthuses. "And of course, that's what you hear when you listen to the records."

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How Seal and Trevor Horn arrived at the magic on those early hits

That's not all you hear, though. Not to Seal's ears anyway.

"I always say a record sounds like the time you had making it," he says.

"The way we used to make records back then was we'd go to a residential recording studio, like Peter Gabriel's Real World in Bath or Manor in Kent, which was Trevor's studio up in the country, for three or four months with a group of fantastic musicians and we'd kick the songs around."

They'd have six or seven song ideas going into the recording session.

"We'd go in and wrestle with them and try different versions, live together, have fun, get into arguments," he says.

"Not too many arguments. But in the end, you'd come out with this thing that sounded like the time you had making it with everyone's energy. Not just the actual playing, but the spirit surrounding that playing, the inflection, which was subject to emotional dynamics."

That's what Seal hears when he listens to those records, which is not that often, really.

"I've always been terrible at going back and listening to music after I've recorded it," he says. "I'm sure you hear a lot of musicians say that. They're on to the next."

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Seal hears a 'sense of idealism in my voice' on those old records

Revisiting those songs on tour, including some he hasn't done in ages, though, required going back and listening for research purposes. And what's odd is he found himself listening more as a fan than the voice on the records.

"I can hear the enthusiasm, or the sense of idealism in my voice, that sense of 'this is gonna change the world,'" he says. "So to your question, 'Do I feel they've held up?' Well, I can still lose myself in them. So I guess the answer would be 'Yes.'"

It helps, he says, that he and Horn took great care to not put a time stamp on their records by using the popular sounds and production techniques of the day. They were going for timeless, not timely.

"We avoided using sounds that would date it," he says. "When you when you approach records with that kind of philosophy, it can often go a long way to making a record which would stand the test of time."

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Seal says music has the power to make the world a better place

As to that sense of 'this is gonna change the world,' Seal says he still believes a song can do that.

"It's the great communicator, isn't it? I mean, it transcends language. And also, you're working in sound, which is at the very core of our existence. Scientists will tell you that we started from a sound, the Big Bang. Religious people tell you 'And then God spoke.' Sound is it is at the core of who we are."

As a recording artist, he feels fortunate to be working with a force as central to the core of who we are as sound.

"When you're able to kind of dance with it and form it and manipulate it in a way that is pleasing, what you're doing is you're cutting through a lot of red tape," he says.

"So you can transcend the resistance. My purpose has always been to allow people to connect with themselves and each other through this magic called love, this thing that is the essence of who we are. If you're able to do that, then undoubtedly, music has the potential to heal, to make the world a better place."

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Seal on seeing 'the beauty of who we are' at a U2 concert

He's seen it happen at a U2 concert he attended several years ago at Madison Square Garden during the chorus of "City of Blinding Lights."

"The house lights were on and 25,000 or however many people, they all turned to one another, pointed and went, 'Oh, you look so beautiful tonight,'" Seal recalls.

"Complete strangers saying that, just looking at each other, not at U2. Therein lies the power of music. Just thinking about it now, I almost get teary eyed because it's magical. That is the alchemy of music and the beauty of who we are. When we're able say that which is so natural and pure. What a beautiful thing to say to someone."

He's hoping for moments as magical as that when he launches his 30th anniversary tour in downtown Phoenix, reconnecting with songs from the self-titled albums he released in 1991 and 1994.

That first release spawned "Crazy," Seal's first Top 10 entry on the Billboard Hot 100. The second yielded "Kiss From a Rose," an even bigger hit that topped the Hot 100 and won three Grammys — Song and Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

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Why Seal didn't bother with 'Kiss From a Rose' on his 1st album

That song could just as easily have been recorded for his first self-titled album. It was written in the '80s, after all. But Seal wasn't feeling it.

"I was listening to lots of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin at the time and I just thought it was a bit kind of soft and wimpy," Seal recalls. "Just very flowery. It's not that I didn't like. It's just that I wasn't particularly proud of it. It was an odd song. A very odd song."

He'd written it subconsciously, he says, while trying to learn how use a new piece of recording equipment.

"A friend of mine heard it," Seal says. "And he liked it. He thought it was decent. He told Trevor, 'You should get Seal to play this "Rose" song that he's written. And I wouldn't play it for him. But eventually I did."

How Seal recalls Trevor Horn's 1st reaction to 'Kiss From a Rose'

Horn was duly smitten. Seal could tell because he got the look he often got when Horn thought he was onto something special.

"He'd be kind of invariably, as we say in England, 'sticking one together' — you know, with his rolling papers," Seal says.

"And whenever he heard something that he liked, his eyes would just get really big, looking over his glasses, like, 'Uh, why don't you go in that booth and put that idea down?' He'd always get me to sing the idea so that he could get to work on it."

Even after they'd recorded it, Seal says, "I thought, 'Eh, it's alright,' but I wasn't really particularly fond of it. I was more into serious music, like 'Pray for the Dying' and other melodramatic ideas I had of what I was supposed to be."

Still, he thought Horn did a masterful producing it.

"But he did an amazing job on everything," he says.

"It wasn't that we saw 'Kiss From a Rose' as this massive hit and therefore gave it more attention. Trevor never really worked like that. He took the same integrity to everything. He left no stone unturned. And it left a lasting impression on me. Why just make a song or a record when you can make a great record?"

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The Batman effect: How a caped crusader took 'Kiss From a Rose' to No. 1

Although it would go on to be his greatest hit, "Kiss From a Rose" did not set the world on fire when it hit the streets in 1994.

"It went into the chart at No. 60, dropped to No. 80 the second week and was done," he says. "And the album had sold about just over 2 million at that point, in contrast to the first album's 7 million. It was a kind of sophomore slump, as you would describe it. And it was done. I was back in the studio making the third album."

That's when director Joel Schumacher called about using the song on the soundtrack to "Batman Forever."

"And it became a massive hit," Seal says. "We didn't go in and rerecord the song. It was exactly the same song that was in and out of the charts at a high of 60."

What gave the song a little extra cultural cache was having Batman in the video.

"It had a video Joel masterfully put together where he intercut bits of the 'Batman Forever' movie and stuck me in a Batcave with a Batlight behind me," Seal recalls.

"Apart from that, it was the same song, difference being MTV, which had to play it. They didn't like it to begin with, or they didn't like it enough the first time. Who knows? Or it didn't fit their format. But they had to play it because however big the promotional engine of a record company is, the juggernaut that goes into promoting a movie, and the money a movie studio can throw at promotion, there's no comparison."

'Kiss From a Rose' was 'just this odd song'

Suddenly, people were actually hearing the song — and not just once or twice but frequently enough to wrap their heads around what Seal himself had always figured was an odd song.

"It didn't sound like anything before it and arguably since it," Seal says.

"It was just this odd song that shouldn't really work but kind of did in the most unusual way. My brother has this great expression, which I love to steal from him. He says it doesn't 'quite curl all the way around.' It doesn't do what you expect it to."

Once people started hearing it on MTV, he says, "It went from 'Oh, that's odd; that's kind of different' to 'Actually, that's not bad' to 'You know what? I really like that 'Rose' song.' And if you're lucky enough to have a song like that break through, it tends to have longevity. Because what's happened is this wonderful sense of discovery for the listener."

There was a fair among of luck in getting to that point, he says.

"But it has to be a good song to begin with. So I'm sure I could speak for Trevor when I say 'We'll take credit for that.'"

He's even learned to hear the magic in his biggest hit.

"Well, I'm older," he says, with a laugh. "I see things in a different way. And I hear things in a different way."

Seal 2023 tour launch in Phoenix

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 25.

Where: Arizona Financial Theatre, 400 W. Washington St., Phoenix.

Admission: $49.50 and up.

Details: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Seal reveals how Batman made 'Kiss From a Rose' a cultural phenomenon