Soul by Seal

London’s Seal’s new album, Soul, is by far the best soul album I’ve heard in a long time. He takes eleven classic soul songs from "Stand by Me" to "A Change is Gonna Come" and, with the help of the amazing David Foster who worked with Celine Dion and Michael Buble, he tears the songs and rebuilds them.

This is not an album for the emotionally handicapped. He will pull you in with his strong, painful voice and make you face the emotion, heartbreak and romance head on. He takes worldly famous songs that I already loved and knew the lyrics to, and he makes them his own in a beautiful web of understanding the emotion behind the songs, bringing his own experiences to the table, and never forgetting the original artists for the songs.

Seal’s vocals are beautifully reminiscent of emotions everyone has felt, and, in a cool, relaxed, and even delicate manner, he manages to rip it out of you and soothe you simultaneously. He has a voice as unique and strong as John Legend’s voice, but he is able to extract more from the listener, and I genuinely knew that, although he has not written many of the songs on this album, he very well knows exactly what those that did went through emotionally.

Now, I never listened to Seal much in the past and decided to listen to one of the songs that made him famous, "Crazy." And, even in it, his voice shines through, but, ultimately, the emotion is almost drowned by the background music. That’s the thing about Seal–his voice is the music and it is almost all that is needed. He gets everything from you with just his voice. The rest just digs deeper and reveal emotions that you never knew you even had.

It’s an emotional experience to listen to Seal, and this is a magnificent album to give someone you want to fall in love with you. The entire album is 2008’s "Sexual Healing," and I think you all know what I mean by that.