Warner Brothers/Elektra/Atlantic
2007
System
About This Album
It's hard to call System a comeback, as Seal never really went away (despite the long gaps between albums), but this 2007 album arrived with the greatest anticipation he's had since the mid-'90s, when his second eponymous album arrived just after the twin hits of "Crazy" and "Killer." All that anticipation had little do with Seal's music, it had more to do with his sudden re-emergence as tabloid fodder in the wake of his 2005 marriage to supermodel Heidi Klum. In the wake of the runaway reality TV hit Project Runway, Klum's star never burned brighter, and its luminescence spilled over to Seal as well, helping to propel him back to the spotlight. Stature so increased, Seal decided to ditch longtime producer Trevor Horn and hire Stuart Price, Madonna's collaborator for her calculatedly retro-disco Confessions on a Dance Floor. Seal employed Price for a similar purpose but instead of reaching way back into the electro past, he decided to revive the house-inflected sound of "Crazy" for System, right down to how the album's opener "If It's in My Mind, It's on My Face" rides a similar stuttering, surging sixteenth-note hook into its chorus.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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