No Filler Music Podcast - Dad Tunes: Seal

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

If you walked into a dance club in 1991, you may have heard Seal's first big single "Killer": the acid house crossover hit with DJ and producer Adamski. And if you sat through the Batman Forever credits in 1995, you heard a completely different sound with "Kiss From A Rose". Between his first two records (both self-titled), the number of musicians that sat in the studio for these recordings with Seal is staggering, and his sound and style is just as varied and wide-ranging. Tracklist Seal - Kiss From a Rose Seal - The Beginning Seal - Bring It On Seal - Dream in Metaphors Seal - Fast Changes Mk.gee - dimeback Benedek - On My Way LL Burns - Get Me Back in the Game This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Gwen. I've got my brother Travis with me as always. And we are wrapping up our dad tunes with some Seal Henry, also known as Seal. And we've got our older brother Spencer with us today. Spencer, how are you? I'm doing good.

How's Texas, my friends? Texas is hot, as always. Well, it's going to cool down here in a couple days, Spencer. I don't know if you're maybe tomorrow. We're supposed to get a cold front coming in. We'll see. What does cool down mean? It means the highs in the upper 70s instead of the low 90s.

Well, I mean, if you wake up early enough, it'll be in the 40s. At least that's what I saw. That may have changed. Man, you know, it changes all the time. That usually never holds. Well, I'm still excited about, you know, the possibility of, being able to actually walk outside in the afternoon without feeling like I'm going to pass out. You know, it sucks.

I'm sure it's nice up there at Q in Washington. I was about to say, I'm not, I can't go outside right now because California is pretty much on fire. And so it's a lot of Oregon. And we're starting to get some some wildfires up here too. I mean, it's not like your front yards on fire. No, but it's really like it's smoky outside. Like last night, it smelled like a campfire outside. Dude, some people will spend money to buy candles that smell like campfire.

You know what? It smelled nice, but I can't enjoy the lovely sun right now because it's just not healthy to go outside. So I feel you guys. I feel, I remember back in the summer days in Texas, like for a month that you just didn't go outside. Right. Not a thing. Yeah, we're still in the middle of that. It's more than a month.

You've been gone too long if you think it's a month. It's like three months. It's July, August, and. half of September at least. Most of September, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that sucks. But yeah, we're talking about SEAL today, boys. Yeah, you know what I was going to say, guys?

I don't know about you, but I remember some childhood summers, jammed as some SEAL. Yeah, I did not pull out that DVD with the home videos on it that has proof of my love for SEAL at a young age. Spence, do you remember that video? I mean, vaguely, maybe. Now that you're saying that, I don't, I would have never remember. remember that without you saying it. So it has me jumping up and down. Yeah, you're in your room, right?

Yeah, I'm in my room. I'm on the bottom bunk. Kew was on the top bunk. And I'm like hopping up and down on the bed singing kiss from a rose. No, I wasn't singing. I was lip syncing singing of a rose because there was a kiss of a rose because there was playing in the background. And, you know, I'm sure, like I said, dad was probably filming it going like, what the fuck have I done here? So let's put that into perspective with how.

old you would have been, probably eight, I'm going to guess. Probably. I mean, it does appear around the time that the record came out, which was 1994, which was his second record, his second self-titled record. Yeah, I'm going to guess that that song didn't become popular until the Batman, was a Batman Forever movie came out, which I think was 95. Yeah, it came out in June, so, yeah, summer of 95, we were rocking that tune. You know what's funny? I remember we had maybe dad made it for us but somebody made a a sign that we printed out and and put up on our wall that said seal and it was written in like Microsoft word art and printed up what and put on our wall how do you remember that I remember that I'm positive maybe you dreamed this you've

what a weird ass dream that would have do you frequently dream of seal no or do you mostly dream in metaphors See, there he is. That's one of our clips for today. Coming in hot. What a segue. Well, Spencer, how old would you have been in 95? 12. 12.

Yeah. So one of the things, Spencer, I know you don't listen to our podcast, so you're not going to know. I listen to some. I don't listen to a lot, no. So recently, as you know, maybe you didn't know. We've been covering Dad Tunes. So last week we talked about Gloria Estefan. And I feel like Gloria and Seal, to me, are two of the like standout amongst the crowd of hard rock and classic rock stuff.

I remember him playing, you know, aside from like classical music and like maybe some jazz stuff. Yeah. We heard Zeppelin. We heard Aerosmith. We heard Boston, if you want to call them hard rock. It's a bunch of classic rock. And then Seal and Gloria Estefan to me are the ones that are like, huh? that's different.

And Chade. And Chade. Yeah. That's right. And Chatee. But, you know, Seale, when you listen to Seale's music, there's a lot of jazz-type things, jazz-type influences, you know, Jeff Beck, the guitar player shows up on one of the songs. Like, it's not that much of a stretch that he would listen to him.

Do you know what song he's on? He's on, bring it on. Oh, okay. I think there's no definitive personnel list. Oh, well, I should say. there's a definitive personnel list, but it doesn't list out what songs these musicians appeared on. Right. But on this record, the one that we're mainly talking about today, there are dozens of musicians

that contribute. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, I saw that list. Yeah, it's nuts. But anyway, yeah, one of the things that we've been talking about is like how hearing Gloria Estefan and or a seal type group or musician. and then somebody like Steely Dan maybe, it's no surprise that we have such a wide range of music that we listen to, right?

Right. But, I mean, do you remember, like other bands maybe that stood out to you among the hard rock besides these two? Well, we would also frequently hear classical music or like modern jazz music. if you remember he frequently had, I can't remember what station it was at this point, but some modern jazz station on in the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was...

It was like smooth jazz. Yeah. It's probably 107-5. Something like that. Well, speaking of genres, what would you guys categorize CEL as? Don't look at Wikipedia. It's tough.

He's definitely unique. I'll say that. He's our, it's R&B. Okay. Right. But there's a lot of different, a lot of layers to it. Yeah. So yeah, let's, let's talk about seal here.

Let's talk about seal. It sounds like from what I've read, he had a pretty rough, uh, childhood. So he was born in London to a Nigerian mother and a Brazilian father. Sounds like his dad was a real piece of shit. So he was immediately placed in, um, foster care. But then he was returned. to his family when he was four. So I don't know the story behind that.

But anyway, apparently he has just had this talent for singing just like within him. Like he's saying for some school concert, he's saying a cover of I can see clearly now at a school concert age 11. He was probably singing that to his parents like, I don't know what pieces of shit you guys are. I can see clearly now. because then shortly afterwards when he was 17, this was after his dad's death, no, before his death death, he opted for homelessness rather than staying with his family. Holy moly.

So he put himself through an architecture course, which I think it's interesting, while living in squats and, you know, not sleeping basically because he's living on the streets, right? But anyway, apparently it wasn't until he was 23 when a girlfriend of his heard him sing for the first time. And as he put it, marched me down to Tottenham Court Road and bought me a bass guitar, a drum machine, and a four track, and said, that's what you should be doing. You're wasting your time. Get on with it. That is an awesome girlfriend. Yes, that's right. Mad props to her. You need people like that in your life for sure. So anyway, so yeah. So like, you know, he had a rough A rough life, right?

If you want to know about the scars on his face, which a lot of people, when they see him, they're like, whoa, what's the story there? Those were not scars given to him by his piece of shit father, as you might think. Maybe he beat him with a belt or something. No. He was born with a condition that explains it, basically. It's a type of lupus called Discord lupus erythematosis. And that's the story, basically.

I think everybody when they see that, they're like, there's got to be something really interesting story there to that. Like, how did you get those scars? But no, it's just a condition he was born with. And he still found a way to marry Heidi Klum. So, you know. Yes. Maybe that's because of his, as the Guardian put it in this article I read, his rich, honeyed baritone. Maybe that's why he was able to get Heidi Klum.

Or other reasons. You know what I'm saying? That honey voice. So I feel like most people probably only know Seal because of Kiss from a Rose. Yes, that's probably true. I know that that was probably how we got turned under him. I'm sure that's how Dad found him. We'll get to that in the second cue.

Okay. So he came out with his debut record in 92 of the same name, self-titled. Actually, 91, I'm sorry. And really, it was a song that he put out with a well-known, electronic producer DJ at the time named Adamski. He turned Seals' song Killer into sort of like this rave, you know, club song, right? And that's kind of what put them on the club banger. I don't know if that was the proper nomenclature back then.

But today you'd call it a banger. What's another term that they use these days? Isn't there another one like getting turned or something like that? This is a song I would get you turned. You're talking to the wrong crowd, kid. Yeah. Yeah, I know. But anyway, so yeah, he put out his own version of that song on his debut record.

But it was that they kind of put him on the map. So I wanted to play, because I know that you guys mentioned that you're not very familiar with his first record. I'm also not very familiar. I mean, I'm familiar with Crazy, which is the other single that's on that record. But I'm going to play, I know we don't play singles here, but I'm going to play the open. track to his first record. It was a single, but it wasn't one of his well-known singles. It's called The Beginning.

And I personally, I thought this was a dope-ass track. Like, I like some of this techno stuff that he was doing on his first record that you really don't hear in his second record, which is what we're mainly focusing on today. But I just wanted to give everybody a flavor of the stuff he was doing before he cut the dreads off and, you know, looks like what he still looks like today. So basically, I was watching this interview. He looked like a fucking badass back then, man. And he had this rock star persona too, which is, you know, he just looked like he looked like he could be a grunge rock star in this interview. Maybe I'll post it on the website. But anyway, this is the kind of music he was

putting out in the early 90s right before he blew up with Kiss from a Rose and all that other good stuff. So here we go. This song is. called the beginning. Well, that was a banger, dude. Sounds like he doesn't need this ad-of-ski guy. I know, right? But no, dude, I love that kind of stuff, man. It's very, very 90s for sure.

I was going to say, dude, it sounded like the intro part. I kind of felt like I was building a city in SimCity 2000. You know what I mean? What the hell? It kind of reminded me. I don't know, I can't remember this song, actually, but remember the Saturday I Live bit with Will Ferrell and Chris Kutton came not at the Roxbury. Not of the Roxbury.

Yeah. That same, that song, yeah. I know what song you're talking of. I don't even know how the song goes now, but that's what that. What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Yeah, that's right. But no.

So this was like, like you said, that sounds like the 90s. Like this was part of the, uh, this, this genre called New Jack Swing. Are you guys familiar with that? Nope. I've heard that term. I just don't really know how to categorize songs. So New Jack Swing is sort of a, basically it's electronic,

but with like hip hop, jazz, R&B, kind of flavoring, right? If you will. There are some strings in there too. I don't know if that was synthesized. You have a well-known example of New Jack Swing. Yeah, I would like to know. And that, is that Jack, J-A-C-K?

J-A-C-K, yeah. New Jack Swing. Well, I'm looking at the Wikipedia page under notable songs, and I don't, I don't recognize here. It doesn't mean I, but yeah, this guy named Teddy Riley is kind of the guy that made it well-known, but there's a song called I Want Her, which reads number five on the U.S. charts and number one in the R&B charts in 1988. So kind of bringing us into the 90s with some new Jack Swing.

Yeah, but that's probably why Seal's first record had some of those elements to it and then somebody either told him, hey, that's, we're done with that. You know, we're going to move on to this. You know, adapt your sound to change because this sound is like, I don't know if somebody decided, let's

elevate Seal out of the club, you know, kind of thing. I don't know if that was part of like his producer or something like that. But he had a pretty long and storyed relationship with his producer at the time. This guy's name was Trevor Horn, who kind of encouraged him to make a kiss from a rose a thing. I actually made some notes about Trevor Horn. Did you? Oh, did you?

Why don't you enlighten this on him? Such a wonderful guest. So you all know, X Buggles frontman. What? But also, yeah, he was the Buckel. front man the bugles who's oh that's why his face looks familiar video killed the radio star

yeah he's on the cover also uh so uh so right after video killed the radio star which was actually 1979 you can believe that we thought that was an 80s for one year maybe two years and one album after that he actually was the singer for yes

what what there was a brief period of time where I guess the two frontmen for yes John Anderson and Rick Wakeman left the group and he joined and was on one album which was 1980s drama

and then afterward he looks like he's produced as a producer almost everything else that yes has done since the 80s all right so this guy is the real deal and he also said at one point

as a producer that that owner of a lonely heart was technically his best work. That was him? Okay. He's hard. He didn't say, but he produced it. Cool. Yeah.

I could see that because that song is really... Yeah, not a fan of that... Well-produced. That style of yes. But there's a lot of cool stuff happening in that song that, you know, you tip the hat to the producer, I guess. Yeah. That's a great song. It's got a lot.

It is. But there is a lot going on in that song for sure. Yeah, definitely. Oh, also I'm reading here that producer Nigel Godrick credits Trevor Horn as an influence. So there you go. Damn. Anyway, so yeah. So Trevor Horn was responsible for Seale's first record in his second one.

I think he worked with him like sporadically throughout the rest of his career. But that's worth noting, especially with all the context of who Trevor Horn is. So anyway, the story is, and from what I could gather from some interviews that I watched with Seal, and this is probably due to his childhood, he did not have a lot of like self-confidence. So like he apparently he wrote Kiss from a Rose a long time ago and he just he thought like in his words he thought it was crap. Yeah, I saw that he wrote it in 87. Yeah.

So he finished it. He says he threw the tape in a corner and then never listened to it again. And he didn't even bother like considering it for something to throw on his debut record, right? And then two years later, Horn insisted he recorded it and still, he still remained skeptical about it. But basically, you know, they threw it on to the second record, obviously, but it wasn't until Batman Forever that it kind of took off. So basically, the story here is that the song flopped initially as a single and was rejected initially as a

song that would play during a love scene in Batman Forever. But the director, like, it and chose to play the song over the end credits. So A seal says, seven million albums later, I owe my career to Joel Shoemaker. So there you go. So if Joel Shoemaker didn't like... That would be Shoemaker, by the way. Well, you know, I'd like to think that he would make shoes on the side, you know? He recently died.

Just to put this in perspective, he just died in June. I didn't know that. How did I miss that? And you're going here and making a mockery of his name, Travis. Well, Shoemaker, you know, Shoemaker. One more thing for Shoemaker, just because this is of our interest. He directed music videos a handful, one being the Kiss from a Rose music video, but also a smashing pumpkins video.

The end is the beginning is the end, which I believe is on the melancholy album. Cool. And then also a Bush video for letting the cable sleep. Oh, I really. remember that video. It's really cool. Directed by Joel Schumacher. That's one of my favorite Bush songs.

All right. So one more thing before we transition into his second record. This is important to me. And I think this kind of speaks to why he has so many different influences, like sounds and genres and stuff that he kind of mixes under his music. So Seale said that a friend of his named Greg Roberts, who was the drummer for some band called Big Audio Dynamite, which I feel like I've heard of them before, gave Seale a tape, and I think this was before he put out of this first record, gave him a tape containing tracks

by Sly and the Family Stone, Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Crosby Still's Nash. Wow. And he says, suddenly he understood what he lacked, as in like what his songs lacked. Wow. He said, it became so apparent to me why I couldn't get signed, so I stopped writing music for a year, he says i went out and bought everything those artists did everything i could lay my hands on and they became my bible so that was in between these two albums now i probably should have said that first but um that was you know when he was first starting out yeah okay writing writing songs and

wasn't getting signed and and whatnot um so anyway what are those artists again sly in the family stone jimmy hendricks lead zeppelin crosbie stills nash so a pretty eclectic That's quite the mixtape there. I was trying to think, like, can I link any of his music stylistically to any of those groups? Yeah, I think you can. But I don't know about it. Maybe sly, yeah.

They don't know about Zeppelin or Hendricks. But it's probably not like, you know, just the, like, maybe just the way a good song is like structure or something like that, you know? Yeah. Compensual. But, but yeah. So his first song that he wrote after that year of like, steady. these masters or whatever was crazy, which was his first big single, right?

So anyway, let's go into the meat of the episode here. So the first song we played was the opening track to his debut record. Now, let's play the opening track to Seal 2, which I've always loved the song. This is one of my favorite Seal songs, yeah. This is not a single, surprisingly. as we like to say around here this is a banger so this song is called bring it on can i just say i think this might be the first episode where we've said the word banger so no i know i've said the word banger at least once but this is a true banger so this is called bring it on and bring it on yeah bring it on

yeah i think that might be my favorite seal song yeah i really the bass line is what stands out i just love that bass so much man yeah and i wish i could I'd figure out who, like who to credit that to because even in the liner notes of the CD, it's just, and other musicians, and then just list out like 50 musicians. So it's hard to say who the actual bass player was. But something interesting here, Kea, I know you're going to like this. The actual writers for the song, obviously seal, but there's five other writers on the song. Two of them, Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin.

are mostly known as members of Prince's backing band, The Revolution. Oh, cool. From 1980 to 1986, or at least that was Lisa Coleman. And Wendy Melvoin was also part of that backing band. So that's cool. He had a lot of musicians with this that were credited for writing this track, aside from just him, which I thought was kind of cool. I think you're right about Jeff Beck being on that song.

I was doing a little search while that was playing. I found a little article on rhino.com, which I think is rhino records. Five songs you may not have realized Jeff Beck played on. Yeah. Speaking of Jimmy Hendricks, Jeff Beck and Seal first worked together on a cover of Manic Depression, which came out on a Jimmy Hendrix tribute album called Stone Free. They enjoyed working with each other, so Seal brought him in to play on Bring It On, which Manic Depression is one of my favorite Jimmy Hendricks song.

songs. So if you're a fan of Jackback, you know, you can go back and listen to our episode that we did on Blow by Blow, which is one of my favorite episodes, Q. We went Blow by Blow on that one. We went track by track by track. Anyway, so, yeah, he worked with, like I said, Seale worked with a ton of musicians on this record, including, apparently he did a duet. This is, this tells you I've never gotten to track nine. He did a duet with Joni Mitchell, track nine. Yeah, I didn't know that until today. Yeah. Exactly. So here we are harping on people who only listen to the singles. I never made it to track nine. I don't think any of us claim to be major SEAL fans. No, this is just nostalgia for me. But the songs on here have always stuck with me. Yeah.

Like bring it on. The other ones, like his music just like leaves an impression. At least it does on me. We got to give credit to dad on that. You know, like I don't know if I would have enjoyed or even, you know, thought any more of seal past kiss from a rose if it wasn't for or dude it's the credit that's the thing it's in the credits you may never yeah that's true because i think about we were young when when we were i mean obviously we saw batman in the theater probably because we were the perfect age for it and i can

picture the credits rolling with this song playing yeah can you for real yeah really yeah it does play during the credits for sure yeah what uh what are the other songs that you guys remember from this album from your youth dreaming and metaphor yeah dreaming and metaphors yeah dreaming and metaphors and pray for the dying. I think it's just because it's track one, two, or three. I remember Don't Cry as well. It cries great, too. And fast changes.

I feel like that song played. Fast changes, I don't, I've heard it. It's familiar a little bit, but I don't, I don't remember that being something I heard a lot of as a child. Well, you're going to hear it again soon because we're going to play it today. It's a great song. I listened to it a couple times today. I have to mention this right now, friends, because it's been bugging me.

And kiss from a rose, does he not say I've been kissed by a rose in the song? Or does he say from a rose in the song as well? He actually talks about that in a interview that I watched. Okay, good. I'm not just crazy. He said, and this is part of his like, like I said, like he, he just doesn't have a lot of like, I don't know, pride or confidence or whatever in his, like he said, he thought Kiss from a Rose is crap. Yeah. He actually says the phrase, Kiss from a Rose is actually grammatically

incorrect, blah, blah, blah. And he starts like talking about it. It's like, dude, who cares? Like, it's a song. Yeah. But anyway. But yeah, I think he says both. I think he says kiss by a rose and kiss from a rose in the song itself, I think. Okay. And you know what? All artists are extremely critical of themselves, you know? You're either really critical or you're super cocky. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. One of the other. I feel like a lot of artists are that way. If you're a true artist, you're never satisfied with your work, you know. Well, considering that Zeppelin was part of his musical Bible, you'd think he really wouldn't care about song, lyrics, or meaning.

Zeppelin songs make no sense. Well, it's either that or they're writing about Lord of the Rings. But a lot of them make sense. It's almost like you're a plant, and I planted you in the audience to say that, because I've got a great quote from him about song meaning. Wait, a Robert plant? No. Okay.

Okay. I see what you did. But I'll save that for later. Let's get to another song, and then I'll talk about his thoughts on lyrics and song meaning, because he actually has something that he says about it. But anyway, so let's play, we're going to play track three. So you're just going to leave Spencer's gold, Robert Plant Show, just hanging out? No, I heard it. I heard it, and I skipped over it immediately. I mean, I hope your audience doesn't need explanation for that. No, they should. I would hope they know who that is. Everybody knows who Robert Planting. If they're listening to this podcast, yeah, I'm sure they do. Yeah. All right.

So let's play Dreaming and Metaphors. Yeah, that's one of the songs that the lyrics always stood out to me. Like, I always remember the lyrics of that one. Dreaming in Metaphors, that's a really cool, like... Cool imagery. Yeah. That one I don't remember hearing as much. Really?

I always love that song. Yeah, me too. But, I mean, I've also hit play on this record, you know, a few times throughout my life, you know? Same. So I don't know if this is one that the dad, you know, skipped over to get the kiss from a rose, you know, or whatever. But anyway, yeah, and again, like bass player, I love the bass. Like the bass. Yeah, me too.

So I actually tried to track down who it is. And talkbase.com. Somebody actually had a post on here, like, hey, who is the bass player for seal? And somebody says that he didn't have a go-to bassist, but it was just a bunch of session musicians. and he listed a few, and two of them appeared on the credits list for this second record. So it's either Pino-Paladino or Lawrence Cottle. I'm hoping it's Pino-Peladino because apparently he shows up on some of Jeff Beck's work as well. I feel like I've actually heard that name, if you can believe that.

Pino-Peladino? I don't know where. Well, he's known for, so he played bass for The Who, the John Mayor Trio, 9-inch Nails, Gary Newman. power station. You talked about Power Station last week. Yeah, I did. That's crazy. I think John Mayer Trio is probably where I heard it from.

So there you go. So this guy is legit. But as the bass, the bass enthusiasts on talkbase.com, who would know their shit, said that he only recorded with the best of the best. Yeah, so he worked with studio musicians, basically. So that's why he got Jeff Beck in there

and all those other guys. So anyway. All right. second clip because there's another cool thing that happens in this song. So here we go. Yeah, I always like those lyrics in the second verse. Yeah, and with the echo of his voice. Yeah, he's kind of going back and forth with himself. But yeah, the lyrics, I'm going to read him here because I just like, there's some imagery here. He says, someone lost their faith in seeking God so they turned to the needle back to the cradle. They were rocking it all too long. Tell me what's going on with your life.

Anyway, I like the turn to the needle. Yeah. But yeah. So speaking of song meetings and whatnot, he actually has a quote. And I think this is part of the CD liner notes. I'm looking at discogs.com. And sometimes people upload pictures of the actual liner notes, right? And he says here.

Trying to find it. Don't tempt me to leave that in, Travis. I don't care. Oh, yeah. He says here. one of the most popular questions people seem to ask is why don't you print your lyrics on the album he says well the answer the answer to that is that quite often my songs mean one thing to me and another to the listener he goes on to say i guess what i'm saying is that the song is always

larger in the listener's mind because with it they attach images which is relative to their own personal experience. So it is your perception of what I'm saying rather than what I actually say that is the key. What he's trying to say is you just couldn't understand, dance, dance, dance. Isn't that true of every song ever written? Well, that's just like, that would be like if an artist, like put a description of the painting in an art museum next to the painting. Like, it's, give it your own meaning.

He's not, he's not going to tell you what he meant the song. to mean. Like some artists probably do say, oh, well, this song is about saving the whales or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. Wasn't the original question just about lyrics, though? Not about meaning? Why they, well, yeah, he, he, somebody asks him why he he doesn't even print the lyrics. Yeah. Right. Yeah. First, it's like, I just want to know what you're saying, not what you mean by it. I guess he's, he's gone one step further and being like, you can't even, you can't even hear the words. Now, this was back, this was back when you couldn't just look it up on the internet. Yeah. So, yeah, if you were somebody who bought a record about the steel CD off the shelf, you literally don't know what the lyrics are unless you pay attention, you know?

Yeah, you just couldn't understand. Because you're not going to just go find them on the internet. And even on the internet today, it's up to whoever's transcribing him, you know? Yeah. Sometimes I read stuff online that I know it wrong because I've got the actual liner notes that do print the lyrics, you know what I mean? So anyway. I mean, and if you look right here, it says, and you know, I couldn't understand. just couldn't understand. Ah, Baba, Baba, you know? Like, that's just wrong. Yeah, I don't hear any

babas in that song for sure. Yeah, how do they transcribe the kiss from a rose? The Bayahias. Let's find out. Bye, yeah, yeah. Kiss from... Is it B-Y-E-Y-ya? It doesn't actually spell out the Bay-Yaz, if you're curious. It's not a word. Somebody somewhere, I'm sure, has done it. There's got to be one of the lyric sites that has it written out. See, this is wrong right here. Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the gray. It's grave.

It's grave. I thought it was grave. Yeah, I always thought it was grave. We've always thought it was grave. Dude, I'm seeing the word gray over and over and over again on this. What? Maybe we're the ones who are dope. I mean, Spencer, that's what you always thought too, right?

That's what I thought too, but, but grave makes no sense. It never did. Grave? No, you throw a rose on the grave. and you got kissed by it because the ghost you know the ghost gave you a kiss that's what i was thought now listen to this oh my kiss from a rose by seal song facts here's somebody i got it here song facts hold on here but it's ba ba ba da da da da ah yeah yeah that's how it says it on my this is s t lyrics dot com badda da this is an this is funny right here though here we go this is a discussion on a

about what this song means. And somebody says, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a love song and a dirty one at that. Gray equals penis. Rose equals lips, as in a woman's red lips. Hence, he's comparing his lover,

whom he apparently admires greatly, to a kiss from a rose on the gray. Oh, come on. I know, right? That's a stretch. I mean, who's got a gray penis? I was going to say, like, you're not even like,

clever. I would never. I would never use the word grade to describe my penis. This person's probably fucking around, but I thought it was funny. Anyway, all right. So let's just move along here. We got one more track to play. And this one, I can maybe see some Crosby Stills and Nash influence, maybe.

But that's the thing. At this point, he's working with so many studio musicians. This might not have even been him who did, who wrote the music. You know, you may have just to play the lyrics and the melody. But either way, this song is called Fast Changes. And I think it's a change of pace from the last two tracks that we played, definitely from the first track that we played. It's a real fast change that we're doing here.

So this is called Fast Changes. If I search my mind a little, I'd come across the reason why you're going. Maybe if I searched a little And if I tried to reconcile a little Then maybe I would know for how long This time Separate room

I would see Dry out I think his voice is amazing in that song I really like his voice in that track Yeah his voice is That's what's shot out to me when I heard it Yeah his voice is great man Definitely unique

There's a person that's credited kind of throughout the record as another writer. Like, you know, bring it on. There's like six writers in total, like including seal. But this other one, Augustus Isidore, or Gus Isidore, also is credited for dreaming and metaphors and fast changes. Apparently, it's like a composer and it does a bunch of other stuff. So he probably is the one who's doing that. The music is probably mostly him like that.

what if you want to call that flute or whatever in the background yeah that sounded like some like early motown stuff to me or like some like some stevie wonderish kind of okay i can see that yeah 60s motown stuff but you know the the reason i guess the reason i brought up crosbie steels and nash is because it had like an acoustic guitar that's really that's pretty much it yeah but but it's more you know it's got more of a i mean it's the closest thing that you'll get to cross be I guess on this record. Yeah, play on a little bit, because I do think that it changes at some point. I don't know how far in.

All right, so we're going to play the next part of this song then here, and we're going to see if it fast changes. Yeah, so there's a definite change there with some strings or something. Yeah, that part at the end was very like George Harrison, like late Beatles kind of stuff. Yeah, some Sergeant Pepper's. Yeah, some of their older. I can't put my finger on a specific track. Yeah, but I'm with you, Spence.

It's, yeah, very, very Beatles. So very George Martin. I'll throw that out there too, you know. Yeah. So that could very well be Augustus Isidore, as I said, who's, you know, I think with a lot of these tracks, it's seal credited for, you know, general like melody and lyrics. and then he's got another writer on there that probably did most of the composition and stuff.

I mean, there are four of the 11 tracks on the record, there are only five that he is the only writer. So. One of them being. And Don't Cry as one of them. Kiss from a Rose is another one, because obviously he wrote that back in the 80s, like we said. Yeah.

But anyway, so yeah, there you go. That's our coverage of, seal. Yeah, dude, I don't know when we're going to return back to something like this. Probably, who knows, if ever, you know? Yeah, maybe never. Because he just, I mean, he stands out for sure.

Like, he is a unique artist. It's not like, you know, I mean, you know, you don't hear somebody. That sounds like seal very often. At least I don't, you know. No. I think he stands out among, totally. Among the, even among like, you know, soul and R&B artists and stuff like that. So maybe that's just because the, you know, the people that he had on the record with him, including Trevor Horn, right?

How far back do we have to go to find any kind of mainstream success for SEAL? Is this the end? Does he have anything post this album that draws any kind of mainstream success, do you know? No. Not from what I could tell. I mean, like he would have singles that maybe became, you know, somewhere on the chart, but wasn't like top 10. or anything. I think, you know, the highest he went was Kissmer Rose, obviously. And that was,

well, that's not true. In the, in, in, so his very first record, probably should have mentioned this earlier, he, he got what's called, what, what some people in the sports world, like to call it a hat trick. Do you, don't know what that is? It's something, something hockey. It's in hockey when you score three goals in a game. So suck it. You know what that means. So you read that today online. No, did I knew that back. You know, I know that because of the, the N64 game I played.

Yeah, I was going to say. The hockey game that I played on N64. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, so he won the first ever hat trick of the 1992 Brit Awards. He won in three different categories, best British male, best British video, and best British album. So he reached number two on the UK singles chart for Crazy and number seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

So, yeah, I think that was the highest he ever went because Kiss from Ir was number four on the UK charts. So, yeah, he peaked early, basically. And I feel he's probably right that if it wasn't for Schumacher putting him, did I say that right? Yeah, you got it. Putting that on the end of Batman, like, who knows if he ever would have had like another blip, you know, or if he would have even continued. That has probably haunted his career and his self-confidence. If you think about it. I lied, dude.

Yes, you're probably right. But I lied. Killer actually reached number one. Killer did reach number one in the UK. So Killer was number one. Okay. And then Crazy was number two. So, yeah, he peaked in this first record.

and then just kind of, you know, but he's still very well known and has sold millions of records, right? But who knows how much of that is credited to to Schumacher? Yeah. So yeah, that's the end of our dad tunes, Q.

I mean, I feel like we could do a lot more, but we're not going there. We absolutely good. We're going to segue into something different. We're not going to say what, but we're going to stay in the same decade as last week. Yeah, 80s.

80s. 80s. 80s. We're going to do, we're going to stick in the 80s for a little bit because that's one of the decades that we've kind of ignored. Yeah. I would say. Totally. So.

Which is nuts. Because I think we all can say we have a weird obsession with the 80s in terms of music. There's something about the sound of the 80s, man. Yeah. And there's a lot of, lots of artists, including the one I'm bringing from our what you heard. today. Oh. That tap right into it.

So anyway, so yeah, let's do our watcherhards. So we like to have our, have our guest play their pick for us first, you know, just because we're gentlemen. So, all right, Spencer, you know what the, what the Delio is. What, so what song, what song stood out to you over the last few weeks that you wanted to bring to the table for us? So this is something that had just literally stumbled across this past week, probably less than a week ago. Perfect.

I can't say a whole lot about this artist. They seem to not be very well known. Their Spotify bio literally has nothing except for how to pronounce the name of the artist. I've tried to do a little dive to try to figure out more about this person. I think this is a very young kid. he goes by McG which is spelled mk period

g all together McG I don't even know necessarily how to describe it I've been in kind of a chill kind of low tempo laid back vibe type style of music lately okay me too cool I feel like I might bring

one that's similar all three of us I was kind of I don't even remember what Spotify playlist or artist radio station I was on that brought this up. I think it was a playlist. But I stumbled upon this artist and then just went and dug into the album more. And this song stood out to me. It's very mellow. Cool.

If I'm going to guess, I think this kid is like maybe 25. And I'm basing that solely on. I found one article from 2017 that's mentioned him. being a junior in at some music college at the time. Gotcha. Album is called a Museum of Contradiction. And yeah, go ahead. Song is called Dimeback.

All right. Here we go. That's great. So, yeah, I like it. Yeah, reminds me of this guy that I was into, like, last year. His name is Alex, but it's all capital letters with a space. in between each character. That's something that people do these days for whatever.

Yeah. But yeah, you would probably like that guy. His name is Alex again, but it's a lot more like, what was his name? Even more, the name's Alex.

How is it? How is it style? So the way that it's spelled is that it's capital letters. It's all spaced one letter. All together, right? Nope. You got to, you know, here's where you get,

you got to space between each letter. So if I don't do that, I'm not going to find them on Spotify. I got to space it out. Nope. Put some dashes in there. No, dashes. What? All you got are spaces. No dashes. So here's what I like about this and bringing it back to

like the DIY bedroom recording kind of stuff. I feel like you get these more intimate sounding songs because, and I'm just guessing that he recorded this in his quote unquote bedroom or whatever. I don't know. I just kind of you get those more like raw intimate kind of songs. Yeah. I don't know. You know, would it come across that way if he was sitting in a super luxurious studio with some producer staring at him, you know? Probably not.

Yeah. I love it. But yeah. I mean, definitely, definitely bedroom. Bedroom. Pop. Bedroom produced. Yeah.

But yeah. The whole album is good. It's similar to that. There's cool. I like that a little bit difference. But yeah, it's just chill. It's easy listening background. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Spencer, Have you, like Quentin and I, have you fell into the vapor wave trap yet? I don't, I'm not up on all of the genre. The terms. It's hard to point to a specific sound with vapor wave. That's the thing about it. There are, I feel like there's different like subsets of vapor wave, and one of them is kind of as cat.

Probably so. Yeah, I feel like as I get older, I want my music to be more and more chill. More mellow. Yeah. You're going to like what I got. And you should have listened last week to my, Oh, yeah. My what you heard.

Equip, which is more like video game inspired type, like old school video game inspired, but it's very laid back like that. Anyway, all right. I'm going to, I'm going to do mine. I'm going to do my, what you heard. Because I feel like it's kind of along the same vein, but more kind of like I was saying earlier, actually inspired from like early, not early, early, but like late, 80s, 90s electronic music.

Like, you know, there's specific, that's something I'm kind of diving into right now is like the history of electronic music. It's actually pretty fascinating. But this guy's name is Benedict. Not Benedict, Benedict. And he was inspired by early house music is what you would say. But like, you know, R&B, disco. and then specifically early house music.

And he actually points to an artist in particular, somebody named Dam Funk, which I think I've heard of him before. Damn Funk? He's actually a more damn, yeah, and it could be Dom, Dom Funk. But he's actually a more current musician, I guess. Like his first record came out in 2009. But he's like how it's described as like a progressive funk artist. But anyway.

So it's mostly instrumental stuff, but yeah, it does sound like, you know, it's from the 90s or the late 80s, his music. But anyway, I'm just going to dive right into it. So this song is called On My Way, and it is off his 2017 record, Binnie's World. So here we go. Very down tempo. It's classic jazzy down tempo stuff. down tempo but also very much like um yeah it also but but i wouldn't call that down tempo i mean yes it has down tippo uh i guess elements to but it's also very much in that like i'm gonna say the word

key our favorite word hymnagogic hymnagogic pop yeah era because like he's he's using those instruments from from that era and it just like i said it sounds like that could be something from the from the late 80s you know yeah Yeah, very early 90s, I would say sound to it. Yeah. I can't place why that sounds familiar to me specifically. That is exactly what hypnagogic pop is all about. Yeah, it's supposed to be like it's tapping into like the sound and the aesthetic of something from, you know,

particularly, you know, mostly the 80s and that. Well, yeah, it feels nostalgic, but you can't, you can't exactly pinpoint. what it is that makes it sound nostalgic. It's very strange. It just taps into the sounds of that. Like Spencer, I'm sure you're a big fan of Tycho, right? Yes.

Yeah, so that's hypnagogic pop, yeah. Or, and I always forget to name these guys, but boards of Canada, we're like sort of like the first ones to really do it. So yeah, it all goes back to them.

But anyway, yeah, so I love this kind of shit. I can listen it all day long. It's really, really good background music. I know I like to say this a lot, but it's good coding music.

If you're somebody who's at a computer all day in codes or whatnot, then, you know, this is the music for you. Anyway, we got one more of what you heard here. Yeah, we do. From Quentin. So what you got for us? So this is a little bit darker, I'd say, like moody kind of music, but definitely. I like dark and moody. Yeah, I think you'll like this stuff.

So this is a guy who goes by L.L. Burr. So you could say his name is Mr. Burns. I would say Mr. Burns for sure. He was in a band called Filthy Boy that released one album back in 2013 and they broke up after that. Now he's back doing solo stuff. He just released an LP or EP, I don't know. It's just two songs. So it's an A and B side single.

I'm going to play Side A. This song is called Get Me Back in the Game. Okay, Q, I'm going to say a couple of names here. Go for it. Mark Knopfler. Yep. And then Lannigan, Mark Lannigan. Yeah, the two marks.

The guy that I brought up, obviously, with the, I brought him up on our, on our Dire Straits episode. But yeah, that voice, right? The very, the very, it's got a cool voice. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And here's what I liked about it. Like, here's that voice on top of, like, a really cool sort of, like, chill. It's very, like, noir, you know, like, very, very deep.

electronic kind of thing. Yeah. Dark. Yes. I know exactly what you mean. And I love that kind of shit. My first thought when I heard that voice was actually Nick Cave. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and they're, you know, I got to, I got to give Filthy Boy a listen because apparently people,

uh, compare them to Nick Cave, Tom Waits, uh, France Ferdinand. So again, uh, L.

L. Burns, yeah, was a lead singer. and Filty Boy back in 2013. So that was a while ago. But yeah, he's trying to get back in the game, I guess. So you're, yeah, and the lyrics too, he's like, man, I've been through the ringer.

You know, I'm trying to, trying to start over here. Like, so strip me down, wash me off and get me back in the game. It's kind of cool. I'm excited to hear what else he's got. Yeah. There you go. I like it. All right.

So that'll do it for us here. You can find us on our website. No Filler Podcast.com, which is going to be getting a uplift. Not an uplift. It's going to be getting a. Facelift? No, because it's going to look the exact same. An update?

It's getting restructured. It's getting rebuilt. More to come on that, but we might have some new features to the website that probably nobody goes to anyway. That could mean some cool things in the future. You guys have a website? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But no, we're going to give you more reasons to go to the website. Let's just put it that way. So anyway, no-filler podcast.com. You can find all of our show notes from every episode that we've ever done, including the one that Spencer was on way back in the day. It was our Food Fighters episode. If you want to go back to that one. Episode four, maybe?

Three or four, yeah, way early on. Anyway. Two years ago now, it seems like. Yeah, exactly. Probably more than that. Yeah. And you can also find us on the, Pantheon podcast network.

We can find plenty of other great music-centric podcasts like No Filler. It's Pantheonpodcast.com or on Twitter at Pantheon Pots. So there you go. Yeah, I guess you can follow us on Twitter too. We usually don't say that, but sometimes we'll interact with you if you actually interact with us. And coming soon to Instagram. And Spencer wants us to be on Instagram.

God knows why. But apparently it's a thing because, I mean, our buddy, Tyler Darling, of I turn my podcast on also has an Instagram account. He's all over it. So, yeah, fine. Maybe TikTok too. Who knows? No, that's not.

No. Okay. I'm trying to be hip with the new, no, no, no, no. With the new, the newest phrase. Not TikTok. Good. MySpace? Maybe Instagram.

Yeah, let's do MySpace for sure. MySpace is still a thing, which blows my mind that people actually still have my, myspace pages, but. And that's mySpace.com slash, no, Phila. Yeah. So anyway. Find us on all those places. You can listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts,

including whatever platform you're using right now. Because obviously you found us already. So anyway, that's that. So we're going to talk at you next week with some 80s tunage. We're not going to spill beans, as Quinn likes to say, because we don't even know what we're going to talk about yet. Spencer, thank you for joining us today, chatting it up. Yes.

Thanks for having me. Yeah. Indeed. Thank you for reminiscing on seal. with us and that'll do it for us. My name's Quentin. My name is Travis. You all take care.

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