Customer Reviews

Soul

5 star:		(133)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I heard "A Change is Gonna Come" played on the R&B station I listen to and was surprised the artist was Seal. I thought he did a great job on the Sam Cooke classic. I then listened to his rendition of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions "People Get Ready." At that point, I knew I was going to buy this CD regardless of the low ratings viewers have given this album. Obviously, Seal fans are used to his "rock" style and aren't ready for such a soulful, classic, melodic CD. The brotha really goes deep into the roots of African-American R&B of the earlier groups, puts his own spin on them, but his delivery is superb. So, old school baby-boomers and post-boomers will really appreciate this CD so aptly named "Soul." Soul it is, and definitely R&B! I listened to every track and never took it out of my CD player while I ran errands for about four hours. Frankly, I was sad when Track 12 played because I knew I had to listen to the CD again. Beautiful CD! Old Schoolers -- you'll love it it if you like the ballads of Wilson Pickett, Al Green, Sam (the Impressions), and of course, the wonderful balladeer Sam Cooke. "I Can't Stand the Rain" is sung like a man (as opposed to Tina Turner) would sing the song, and I didn't have a problem with his rendition. I love this CD, and I've never bought a Seal CD in my life! Also, you'll remember Luther Vandross covered a lot of songs and took home lots of Grammy's. So, if you can cover a great song but add your own flavor, what's wrong with that? Beautiful music remains beautiful if the artist can sing!

I started reading through some of these reviews and I think that what people are missing is that beyond being another Seal album, this is an ode to the classics performed by one of the best voices of this generation. The songs he chose are so amazing and I'm so glad to hear someone record them who can really do them justice. I will truly enjoy listening to this record over and over.

One of the mistakes that these so called reviewers make is rating each song as better or worse than the original version. Seal puts his on stamp on each and that is what makes each song so good. When I heard his version of "Walk on by", I did not like it. Now after listening to it over and over, Dionne Warwick's take on it seems lacking. Cut the guy some slack - each one of his CDs has had its own flavor and I appreciate the effort that it must take to redfine his style each pass through the recording studio. The biggest mistake a recording artist can make (in my opinion) is to crank out the same predictable stuff. With Seal you never know what to expect. He could record Disney's "Its a Small World" and make it sound sweet!

I have been following and loving Seal since his "Killer" days. This album is such a mature and wonderful addition to his already great work. He has taken some cool old classics and made them better than they were the first time! "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" and "If you don't love me by now" have never sounded so soulful and sweet. What a LUCKY girl that Heidi Klum is!!!

Soul is a disc that you really want to like - stellar production - amazing talent - legendary material - almost guaranteeing that Seal's tribute to the golden era of Soul and R&B would easily score five stars on technical merit alone.

So where's my enthusiasm? Upon further review, I suspect it was left at the door with the headliner who, while making an airtight composite of a great album, fell prey to the fatal flaw of most artists who take on an entire recording of cover material - holding the songs so tight that they forget to forego the Kareoke and leave little of themselves on the final take.

To be fair, there's not one truly bad cut on the entire disc (I Can't Stand The Rain and If You Don't Know Me By Now are standouts) however, Soul projects an overwhelming "in the moment" feel - a coolly professional encounter that leaves no lasting impression.

Instead of simply pulling all the levers in his quest to "manufacture" a great record, Seal would have been better served bringing his heart as well as his body to the sessions. There's actually much here to like - just not much to remember.

First, let me put this in context. I think Seal has one of the best voices in pop music today. I love most of his CDs. This CD, unfortunately, is a complete misfire. I tried to think about how I could condense the problem in a few statements. It comes down to 3 things:

1. The original songs have already been performed at such an extraordinary level of artistic performance by the original artists, that it's going to be tough to out perform them here.

2. The arrangements are just lackluster and completely boring. Seal's voice can't fix that problem. Listening to this CD was like hanging out in the waiting room at the doctor's office.

3. Seal's interpretation of these songs is so uniteresting and so "middle of the road", that I found myself switching the display on the time counter on the CD player to see how much longer the track would last.

I really love his voice, but this is incredibly boring.

Thank you Seal. How beautiful this is, I was blown away when I heard "A change is gonna come" I thought it was Sam Cooke at first than I heard Seal's melodic tone on the end of one of the notes. Fabulous!!!
Thank You!

At the beginning of his classic track "Killer," Seal says, "It's the loneliness that's the killer." And maybe that's just it: after you marry a supermodel and get her to duet with you on your CD ("Wedding Day" on System, 2007), even if it's quite a good song, the critics just don't take you seriously anymore, nevermind what you try next.

Witness the tepid critical reception of what Seal tried next, Soul. The record is an hommage to classic soul music - it boldly and unashamedly soldiers through the well-known territory of "A Change is Gonna Come," "Stand by Me" and "People Get Ready." To make things even more complicated for the critics, it's produced by David Foster. Here are some excerpts from the web:

"Is this album really necessary? Well, life is really no better or worse after listening to Soul. It's a rather innocuous collection." (From Popmatters)

"The problem with most of these songbook albums - Soul included - is that in choosing such memorable tunes, Seal inevitably invites comparisons to originals few can hope to transcend. Unless you do something radically different-see Cat Powers' inventive Jukebox (Matador) from last winter-you risk sounding like a sub-par imitation." (From VIBE)

"But the songs he has chosen [...] have been reinterpreted so many thousands of times, he'd have to reinvent them to get anyone to pay attention, and the only thing new that Seal brings to the party is a feeling of swank Euro-sophistication that saps the music of much of its emotional oomph. Soul is an unnecessary record." (From Rolling Stone)

In a way, this is what a modern music critic would have to say, of course. We've been conditioned to expect that covers - at the very least - have to be unusual to pay them any attention. And covers sung by an artist whose prime, supposedly, is behind him... well, that's borderline unforgivable!

The truth, of course, is much different. This is a very beautiful record. The overall sound is nothing short of remarkable - this is studio perfection without being dull, full of everything Pro Tools has to offer, but completely 'straight up': unlike, say, Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, which deliberately shows its hip hop production values and thus overlays its glistening sheen with some `old school' grit, Soul uses the entire arsenal of digital music making in the interest of sounding realistic. Of course, it's not true: while there undoubtedly many musicians here playing real instruments, there are - probably - as many virtual instruments. The amazing thing is, it sounds real, even though you know it can't be, at least not completely. It's like that moment in animated movies - Shrek, maybe, or Monsters Inc., when you noticed, "They can animate individual hairs now. Wow."

Seal's vocals are superb throughout. He's an excellent soul singer, in the same way that Annie Lennox is, for example. There's a very slight artifice in his interpretation of these songs - correctly identified in the quote from Rolling Stone - that I think is due to his non-American roots. He's not Sam Cooke, but then, nobody is.

I think the key to refuting the critical consensus here is to say that these songs deserve to be sung. Sung in ways that don't make travesties of the original, classic arrangements by insisting on reinterpreting them for the umpteenth time. Jazz has an expectation where great singers must put their own spin, their own personal take on a song. Pop doesn't have the same paradigm, or at least not in exactly the same way. It's been quite acceptable to produce loving, detailed versions of songs that are, in some essential way, the same as the original. Sometimes, surprisingly, the constraints of performing a song using the same arrangement as the original has brought out something decidedly great. Listen, for example, to the Neville Brothers' version of "A Change is Gonna Come." Daniel Lanois' sleepy arrangement can hardly be called a new interpretation - all it does is strip away some of Cooke's strings and replaces them with more guitars and synth pads. Yet Aaron's voice makes it into a very different song.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Seal achieves quite the same heights of expressiveness in his version. But it's more than merely respectable - it's a very good version. And his "It's Alright" is amazing, as are "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" and "People Get Ready," which comes across as truly heartfelt rendition that has something new to say.

I think, it's enough - no more than enough: amazing - to hear a great voice perform emotionally accurate, heartfelt, inspired renditions of great material. If it's tastefully produced by one of the industry's leading lights, that's a bonus. Since classic R&B essentially ceased to exist as an alive genre in the 1970s, any `new' releases in this mode have been aimed at a rock audience and had more rock `grit' than is organic to the form. Seal's Soul simply restores the strings, horns and background vocals to their rightful place.

I'm going to take a contrarian position: I recommend this.

The man has this great voice and now he's done justice to some great standards. Check out "I'm Afraid Of The Rain"...........awesome!

These are "easy listening" versions of great songs. Good CD nonetheless. It's quite relaxing, especially during long commutes and road trips with our small children. It keeps them calm and quiet, which is GREAT!