"Kiss From a Rose" is a beautiful and elegant romantic ballad by British soul singer Seal. His warm, soulful voice and lavish harmonies elevate the song to greatness. The track is superbly arranged and orchestrated and has a baroque quality. These features make it one of the best pop songs of the '90s. I just recently learned that Seal wrote it. I've been seriously underestimating this artist all these years. I always knew he had a great voice but wasn't aware of his other talents. In addition to being a singer, he's a talented songwriter and plays the guitar and bass. He has written or co-written a number of his other songs, including the hits "Crazy" and "Prayer For the Dying.""Kiss From a Rose" was a single from Seal's self-titled second album, which was released in May of 1994. The song reached #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was re-released in 1995 and included on the soundtrack for the blockbuster film Batman Forever. After the film opened, the track blew up. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart and climbed to #4 on the UK singles chart. The song also held the top spot on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart for 12 weeks. And it performed extremely well on the charts in other parts of the world, reaching the top-10 in Australia, France, Norway, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland. For a while, you couldn't get away from the track; however, it's such a powerful song that it never gets stale even after multiple plays, well for me anyway.
Seal wrote "Kiss From a Rose" as a tribute to folk-rock supergroup Crosby Stills & Nash while he was living in a squat in Kensal Green, London. The track earned the singer three Grammys at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards in 1996 in the following categories: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Male Performance. It's cool that this song was given a second life upon its re-release in '95. It would have been a crime for such a great song to have gone overlooked.
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