Soul 2
Encyclopedia
Soul 2 is the eighth studio album by British
pop
singer Seal
. The album was released on 7 November 2011 through Reprise Records
. Like its predecessor, Soul (2008) the album consists of soul
classics, and it was produced by David Foster
, Jochem van der Saag, and long-time collaborator Trevor Horn
. It was preceded by the lead single, "Let's Stay Together
" on 30 September 2011.
and Trevor Horn
in London
and Los Angeles
to record Soul 2. The album mainly consists of classic soul songs from the 1970's by artists such as Marvin Gaye
, Bill Withers
, Al Green
, and Teddy Pendergrass
. Seal also recorded Bob Dylan
's "Like a Rolling Stone
", but it did not end up on the album. In a press release, Seal said of the album: "In my twenty years on a journey in the music industry, two things remain constants, the voice and more importantly, the song. I continue to make music because of the chance that this day could indeed be the day I write another great song or have the opportunity to sing one. The songs on Soul 2 are a natural evolution in the arc of soul music from the songs on the first Soul album -- and they are all-time classics."
gave the album four out of five stars writing, "His voice and interpretive skills are such, though, that most tracks fit him like a glove, to the point where, on Rose Royce
's Wishing on a Star
, his oak-aged vocal seems a better fit for the remorseful lyric than original singer Gwen Dickey's." BBC Music
's Mike Diver gave the album a positive review commenting that "there’s nothing bad to be said for Soul 2, and with [Trevor] Horn on production everything shines brightly like the first snowflakes of a new winter. Seal the songwriter might never hit the heights of the early 1990s again – but Seal the singer can still hold his own amongst today’s clutch of contemporary soul stars." Andy Gill of The Independent
felt that the cover versions were too faithful to the originals, while calling Seal's voice "a natural fit" and the arrangements "impeccable".
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
singer Seal
Seal (musician)
Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel , known simply as Seal, is a British soul and R&B singer-songwriter, of Nigerian and Brazilian background. Seal has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1992, four Grammy Awards, and an...
. The album was released on 7 November 2011 through Reprise Records
Reprise Records
Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:...
. Like its predecessor, Soul (2008) the album consists of soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
classics, and it was produced by David Foster
David Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
, Jochem van der Saag, and long-time collaborator Trevor Horn
Trevor Horn
Trevor Charles Horn CBE is an English pop music record producer, songwriter, musician and singer. He was born in Houghton-le-Spring in north-east England....
. It was preceded by the lead single, "Let's Stay Together
Let's Stay Together (song)
"Let's Stay Together" is a song by Al Green on his 1972 album of the same name. Released as a single in 1971, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and remained on the chart for 16 weeks and also topped Billboards R&B chart for nine weeks. It was ranked the 60th greatest song of all time...
" on 30 September 2011.
Background
Following the worldwide success of 2008 cover album Soul, Seal teamed up with producers David FosterDavid Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
and Trevor Horn
Trevor Horn
Trevor Charles Horn CBE is an English pop music record producer, songwriter, musician and singer. He was born in Houghton-le-Spring in north-east England....
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to record Soul 2. The album mainly consists of classic soul songs from the 1970's by artists such as Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
, Bill Withers
Bill Withers
William Harrison "Bill" Withers, Jr. is an American singer-songwriter and musician who performed and recorded from 1970 until 1985. Some of his best-known songs are "Lean on Me", "Ain't No Sunshine", "Use Me", "Just the Two of Us", "Lovely Day", and "Grandma's Hands"...
, Al Green
Al Green
Albert Greene , better known as Al Green, is an American gospel and soul music singer. He reached the peak of his popularity in the 1970s, with hit singles such as "You Oughta Be With Me", "I'm Still In Love With You", "Love and Happiness", and "Let's Stay Together"...
, and Teddy Pendergrass
Teddy Pendergrass
Theodore DeReese "Teddy" Pendergrass was an American R&B/soul singer and songwriter. Pendergrass first rose to fame as lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the 1970s before a successful solo career at the end of the decade...
. Seal also recorded Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's "Like a Rolling Stone
Like a Rolling Stone
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a 1965 song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Its confrontational lyrics originate in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England...
", but it did not end up on the album. In a press release, Seal said of the album: "In my twenty years on a journey in the music industry, two things remain constants, the voice and more importantly, the song. I continue to make music because of the chance that this day could indeed be the day I write another great song or have the opportunity to sing one. The songs on Soul 2 are a natural evolution in the arc of soul music from the songs on the first Soul album -- and they are all-time classics."
Critical reception
Caroline Sullivan of The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
gave the album four out of five stars writing, "His voice and interpretive skills are such, though, that most tracks fit him like a glove, to the point where, on Rose Royce
Rose Royce
Rose Royce is an American soul and R&B band. The group is best known for several hit singles including "Car Wash," "I Wanna Get Next to You," "Wishing on a Star", "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" and "I'm Going Down".-Career:...
's Wishing on a Star
Wishing on a Star
"Wishing on a Star" is a 1978 hit single by Rose Royce for Whitfield Records.-Background:Included on their second album, Rose Royce II: In Full Bloom, "Wishing on a Star" is a slow ballad written by Billie Rae Calvin and produced by Norman Whitfield. The lyrics concern a woman longing for the...
, his oak-aged vocal seems a better fit for the remorseful lyric than original singer Gwen Dickey's." BBC Music
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
's Mike Diver gave the album a positive review commenting that "there’s nothing bad to be said for Soul 2, and with [Trevor] Horn on production everything shines brightly like the first snowflakes of a new winter. Seal the songwriter might never hit the heights of the early 1990s again – but Seal the singer can still hold his own amongst today’s clutch of contemporary soul stars." Andy Gill of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
felt that the cover versions were too faithful to the originals, while calling Seal's voice "a natural fit" and the arrangements "impeccable".
Track listing
Notes- (*) denotes co-producer
Charts
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
42 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... (Flanders) |
16 |
| Belgian Albums Chart Ultratop Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts... (Wallonia) |
3 |
| Czech Albums Chart | 9 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
25 |
| French Albums Chart Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique The Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique is the inter-professional organization which protects the interests of the French record industry... |
6 |
| Polish Albums Chart | 38 |
| Spanish Albums Chart | 32 |
| Swiss Albums Chart | 38 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
24 |
Release history
| Country | Date | Format | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 4 November 2011 | CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... |
Reprise Records Reprise Records Reprise Records is an American record label, founded in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. It is owned by Warner Music Group, and operated through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:... , Warner Bros. Records Warner Bros. Records Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies... |
| France | 4 November 2011 | Digital download Music download A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment... |
|
| 7 November 2011 | CD | ||
| Australia | 11 November 2011 | ||
| Germany | |||
| United Kingdom | 21 November 2011 | ||
| United States | 31 January 2012 |