Seal’s unique voice and poetic lyrics made him one of my favourites back in the 1990s (or perhaps it was my young and impressionable mind? Who knows). Even 2007s System was a great listen (except perhaps for the song he did with Heidi Klum, a sweet, sappy yet terrible, terrible song); but even at that, System was nowhere near 1991s Seal nor 1994s Seal II. But I held hope, since he himself noted that while System was a lot of fun recording, it was lyrically extremely simple and nothing near some of his previous work.

Seriously, can you compare: “Racism in among future kings can only lead to no good. Besides, all our sons and daughters already know how that feels” to “There’s no sacrifice great or small, I wouldn’t do, My ambition is, Bringing happiness to you”?

Lyrics such as the latter combined with less than original melody makes for two disappointing new songs on Seal’s new greatest hits compilation CD. Hits is a collection of some of his best hits plus two new songs. I haven’t seen the CD, but I did get the chance to listen to the two new songs, “I’m Your Man” and “Thank You”. And while the emotions they convey are sweet, the melody and the lyrics are worthy of a 15 year-old new on the pop music scene hoping to make enough hearts flutter to make his mark.

So while I can’t give you any advice on if you should buy the CD or not (maybe it has some awesome feature or hidden track or insert or something), I can tell you that if you already own all his other songs and only want to buy the CD to listen to the new titles in the hopes that they are a reflection of his older material – don’t.

But if you have none of Seal’s CDs and wish to discover him, then you should definitely buy Hits, as it’s a compilation of some of his most popular songs, including “Kiss From a Rose”, “Fly like an Eagle”, “Killer” (the song that put him on the charts) and “Crazy”. And hopefully his next CD will reflect more his earlier work with the polish of his last full CD.

I look forward to it.

First published here on Blogcritics.