When a man is wrong

DISCOGRAPHIC

OH BOY, HOW I used to love Seal.

I first fell in love with the big, London-bred Nigerian one, in the late '90s, when his third album, Human Being, was released. That perfect LP - deep and raw, with a coat of gloss - would be his creative high - after that, it was Top 40 pacification, and deadly dull covers, and that tedious German bint (Heidi, of course. Well it would be, wouldn't it?)

I was never a big fan of Kiss From A Rose, but boy, I loved, and love, Bring It On, and Alive, and Newborn Friend. Crazy is still intoxicating, and Killer is as serrating and electrifying as it ever was. And, have you ever heard Come See What Love Has Done, from the Killer EP? Wow... Future Love Paradise, or No Easy Way? Nuff said.

After his third album, there was a drought, punctuated by the unreleased Togetherland, and then Seal IV, which was glossy and box-ticking, but so what? In the years that followed, Seal fans realised, yeah, so what?

These days, according to Wikipedia, he's a judge on The Voice Australia. Oh, no. Not that. Anything but that... It's the final nail in the coffin; after LA, and the gash, and the cheesy ads: it's when artists sell out and fall off, yo...

Seal's last masterstroke, maybe, was 2003's awesome Love's Divine, a truly perfect record, and a perfect video of epic proportions, directed by Sanji Senaka (who also helmed The Pharcyde's Passin' Me By).

As When A Man Is Wrong (my favourite Seal song) goes, "sometimes I get thing wrong to get things right." Maybe we'll get the '90s Seal back. A prayer for the dying, anyone?