Even “Crazy,” the album’s biggest single, is exquisitely laid back, weaving trance synths, wakka-wakka guitar, and a new jack swing-influenced beat into a billowing backdrop for Seal at his bluesiest. The restraint is no mean feat, given that the song was inspired by nothing less than the falling of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre, two years before.
Unfortunately, Seal’s lyrical gifts were not necessarily up to such grandiose themes. The chorus of “Crazy”—“We’re never gonna survive unless/We get a little crazy”—was meant to capture the yearning for freedom that triggered the world-historical events of 1989, yet it’s essentially “YOLO” stretched out over 17 syllables. Seal’s frequent paeans to freedom were never exactly “Redemption Song,” and sometimes they could be asinine, even offensive. (From “Crazy”: “Crazy yellow people walking through my head/One of them’s got a gun, to shoot the other one/And yet together they were friends at school.”) Even at their most affecting, Seal’s lyrics often don’t stand up under close inspection. “Show me the way to solve your problems and I’ll be there,” he pleads on “Show Me”—an empathetic sentiment, perhaps, but hardly the most proactive.
Posted from: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/seal-seal/