There used to be a greying tower alone on the sea

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

12/06/94 : Seal II - Seal


Another one we owned (nine for the year) and I've not heard it in ages but I remember there being some decent tracks on it.

Yeah - it's decent enough. He's got a nice voice and the tracks are well put together - "easy listening" is a somewhat pejorative term but this is definitely music that's easy to listen to. I can't say it's something I'd go out of my way to search out (except maybe "Kiss From A Rose" or "Newborn Friend") but it's all decent enough. Do I have anything more to say about it? No, I don't - you'll already know if this is your bag or not because you couldn't avoid the lad back in the day. It's certainly an iconic album cover though.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his third week of an impressive forty week run with it having spent its first two weeks at the top - it also had another five runs over the next two years, having 81 weeks in total. The rest of the top five were 2 Unlimited (a new entry), The Cranberries, a Deacon Blue best-of and Eternal with the next highest new entry being a somewhat surprising Alice Cooper at a somewhat surprising #6.

For such a successful album, Wikipedia has remarkably little on it - it's his second eponymous album and it shouldn't be confused with the Supermarine Seal II aircraft from 1921 (which has considerably more text on it). Looking at his entry to pad things out, I learn that Seal is actually his real name - I imagine he probably went by Henry at school in London in the 60s and 70s (as opposed to his other available names which are Olusegun, Olumide and Adeola). Back to the album, there are some pretty well known names involved - it was produced by Trevor Horn and features (amongst many others) Joni Mitchell, Anne Dudley, Jeff Beck, Pino Palladino and William Orbit. Critically, the views were somewhat mixed but commercially it did very well getting to #3 in The Netherlands and Canada and #2 in Australia - it may have "only" got to #15 in the US, but it sold five million copies over there.

Unsurprisingly for such a successful album, discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a quid but it seems like original pressings of the vinyl go for chunky money with the cheapest being £99 and the most expensive a hefty £255! There's nothing wrong with this album because it's all done very slickly but that doesn't quite make it all right for me - but if you like it, you like it.

05/06/94 - Not as fun as I hoped
19/06/94 - Not great

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