This week our host for Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams, has given us the prompts, Hug, Kiss and Embrace. I have chosen Kiss From A Rose, by Seal. This was an easy pick for me as I just happened to hear it again today. I have always liked it as it reminds me of a visit back home to the UK in the nineties. It was such a great trip and this song was being played everywhere. On checking I did notice that I had featured this song more than three years ago for another SLS prompt. I think enough time has passed and that it really doesn’t matter if I choose it again, right?
Have a great Sunday.
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The Song
One of the more mysterious songs ever written, there has been much speculation as to the meaning of “Kiss From A Rose” – many think it has something to do with drugs, while others hear it as an expression of love or a journey to the afterlife. Seal has never explained what the song is about, offering only that there was “some kind of relationship that inspired the lyrics.” Seal bucked convention by not including printed lyrics with the album, something he did because he didn’t want to wash away anyone’s interpretation. He also says that his songs often mean more than one thing, so attributing a meaning would be too simplistic. In lieu of lyrics, Seal wrote a screed on the subject that went with the album. “I think it’s the general vibe of what I’m saying that is important and not the exact literal translation,” he wrote. “The song is always larger in the listener’s mind because with it they attach imagery which is relative to their own personal experience. So it is your perception of what I’m saying rather than what I actually way that is the key.”
Seal wrote this song sometime around 1988 when he was living in a squat in Kensal Green, London. He says it was a liberating time, as it was before he had a record deal and there was no pressure on him. He didn’t know how to play any instruments, so he sang the instrumental parts onto a 4-track tape recorder as an experiment. He tossed the tape aside and thought nothing of it; when he recorded his 1991 debut album, he didn’t even consider it. The song was revived two years later when Seal played if for his best friend, who told Seal’s producer, Trevor Horn, about it. Horn made Seal play it for him, and he liked what he heard. They recorded the song for his second album (Seal, 1994), but they still nearly tanked it. “I thought it was too flowery and that it didn’t fit,” Seal told The Guardian. They were going to pull it from the tracklist, but reconsidered after their friend Lynne Franks heard the album-in-progress and said she liked “that song that was something about a rose.”
The song was released as a single in the UK, where it went to #20 in July 1994. In America, the song didn’t get noticed until it played under the end credits of the movie Batman Forever and was included on the soundtrack. The film was released in May 1995, nearly a year after Seal’s album was issued. The movie appearance sparked demand for the song in the US; it was issued as a single there in June 1995 and climbed to #1 in August.Batman Forever was distributed by Warner Bros., the same conglomerate that owned Seal’s US label, Sire Records. The song was submitted for a love scene featuring Nicole Kidman’s Dr. Chase Meridian character and Val Kilmer’s Batman, but the film’s director, Joel Schumacher, decided it was a better fit under the end credits.
Do you hear the lyric as “kiss from a rose on a grave?” If so, you’re not the only one, but it’s really “kiss from a rose on a gray.” David Sancious, who played keyboards on Seal’s 1998 album Human Being and joined him on the subsequent tour, found out from the source. “We were having lunch somewhere one day and he explained it to me,” Sancious told Songfacts. “It was a poetic thing, just a little taste of poetry that happened to sound like something else.”
With its curious waltz time, lavish harmonies and epic sound proportions, “Kiss From A Rose” has a very different sound and stood out on the radio, where many stations were willing to play it. In the US, it was a #1 hit on the Adult Contemporary charts for 12 weeks.
This won Grammy Awards in 1996 for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance. It wasn’t eligible for an Oscar because the song appeared on Seal’s album before it was used in the film.
Courtesy of Songfacts
The Lyrics
Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya There used to be a greying tower alone on the sea You became the light on the dark side of me Love remained a drug that's the high and not the pill But did you know that when it snows My eyes become large and The light that you shine can't be seen? Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah And now that your rose is in bloom A light hits the gloom on the grey Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya There is so much a man can tell you, so much he can say You remain my power, my pleasure, my pain Baby, to me, you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny Won't you tell me, is that healthy, baby? But did you know that when it snows My eyes become large and The light that you shine can't be seen? Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah (yeah) Now that your rose is in bloom A light hits the gloom on the grey I've been kissed by a rose on the grey I've been kissed by a rose on the grey And if I should fall, will it all go away? (I've been kissed by a rose on the grey) I've been kissed by a rose on the grey There is so much a man can tell you, so much he can say You remain my power, my pleasure, my pain To me, you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny (yeah) No won't you tell me, is that healthy, baby? But did you know that when it snows My eyes become large and The light that you shine can't be seen? Baby, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah Now that your rose is in bloom A light hits the gloom on the grey Yes, I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey Ooh, the more I get of you, the stranger it feels, yeah (yeah) And now that your rose is in bloom A light hits the gloom on the grey Ba-ya-ya, ba-da, ba-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya Now that your rose is in bloom A light hits the gloom on the grey Writer/s: Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
