Seal - MTV Unplugged, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City, 4-9-1996

I have to admit I don't know much about British singer-songwriter Seal or his music. He's best known for the songs "Crazy" and "Kiss from a Rose," and has sold over 20 million records. But the other day, I got the song "Crazy" stuck in my head, and decided to seek out more of his music. He's usual as singer-songwriters go, because he has a soulful voice, and has typically put a lot of dance pop production to his songs, often including elements of trip hop or house music. 

I do like a lot of these modern production elements on his songs. In particular, his first two albums are his most acclaimed, and producer Trevor Horn did a good job with those. That said, being more of a classic rock guy, I was curious to hear if he's done those songs from his early albums without those modern production elements. It turns out there's one concert recording that's ideal for someone like me, his 1996 MTV Unplugged performance, presented here. It's a long stretch to call it an acoustic performance, since he plays with a full band. But it does have a stripped back sound compared to his records. 

This concert has never been officially released. In fact, he hasn't put out any live albums until the 2000s. But the sound quality is excellent, since it was professionally recorded. It lacked one of his biggest hits though, "Killer." This song was credited to Adamski, and was a big number one hit in 1990. But it was co-written by Seal, and he sang lead vocals on it too. It turned him from a musical nobody to a star in a matter of weeks, leading to a recording contact and the rest of his music career. So, since he didn't do it for the MTV Unplugged show, I found a version he did for a French TV show in 1992, and added that at the end. It happened that he did one more song for that show, a cover of "Hey Joe," the classic rock song made famous by Jimi Hendrix, so I added that in as well.

I believe all the songs here are written or co-written by Seal, with three exceptions. First, there's "Hey Joe" which I just mentioned. He also did "Stone Free" by Hendrix, and "Quicksand" by David Bowie.

As I said above, I don't know much about Seal's music career as a whole. But I think this is a solid, impressive concert performance (even though he almost never talked between the songs), and it includes all of his big hits.

This concert is 45 minutes long. But the album as a whole is 55 minutes long, thanks to the two extra songs at the end.

01 Stone Free (Seal)
02 Prayer for the Dying (Seal)
03 Future Love Paradise (Seal)
04 Blues in E (Seal)
05 Crazy (Seal)
06 Quicksand (Seal)
07 Kiss from a Rose (Seal)
08 Violet (Seal)
09 talk (Seal)
10 Deep Water (Seal)
11 Don't Cry (Seal)
12 Hey Joe (Seal)
13 Killer (Seal)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634933/Seal_1996_MTVUnpluggdBrooklynAcdemyofMusicNYC__4-9-1996_atse.zip.html

I could have used a screenshot from the exact concert featured here, since the video of it can be found on YouTube. But I opted for a photo from a different (and unknown) 1996 concert, because the image quality was markedly better.