Mourning England in Song. Part 5 - 1991 Violet - Seal

 

Readying myself for emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent in England. You can read more about why I am doing this here: https://kierkegaardslunch.blogspot.com/2026/08/mourning-england-in-song-part-1.html 

Memories make identity. That's why I'm writing this series of posts. I have to find and claim my identity, these days more than ever. Yet when you're trans, memories can become complex and loaded. For me, stripped of much by a spouse who was bitterly unable to accept what I needed to do, who I was even, and who made these things clear, memories can be tainted. To back into the past means for me to ready myself for something that's never simple. It can be raw. It can be like remembering a old movie, starring someone else. It can bring joy too, if I can decentre myself - recollections of my children will do that. 

One part of my past where I can go where I always recognise myself and where I am always safe is music. My music was always mine - my songs, my ocean of feelings, my tears, my sense of being understood as if an artist had caught something vital, or caught sight of my life in some way. That goes for songs which I can share with others - others who love the same song too, or perhaps saw a band the night I did. The part of me that comes out from me to meet another in a shared love of a song is the realest part, the most intimate, most honest. In my sharing these songs with anyone who is reading these words, then I am doing something of that with you here too. 

This song makes me think of all these things because, well, it's just so winsome and personal and gorgeous. Landing at the end of Seal's debut album (it entered the charts at No 1 and won everything), it's a languid, drifting soundscape of a song, all long chords that last forever and don't resolve, don't ask the listener to arrive anywhere. 

The song runs slow, but the thing that makes it feel unhurried rather than merely slow is the relationship between the backbeat and the other parts. The snare lands where you'd expect it in a much slower song, while hi-hats and percussion are busy above it. Your ear tracks the busy layer and the body tracks the slow one, and the gap between the two creates suspension - the sensation of floating that you get in quiet-storm soul. A bass rumbles below, a synth twists in the air above. Piano joins in. There might even an electric double bass in there. And then there's Seal stunning voice rambling through, awash with longing, with a lyric about letting go, moving on, saying goodbye. About finding peace. 

It's all wrapped together by Trevor Horn's unique touch - the sustain and reverb and long decays - plus his sampling voices from a movie, just out of reach of full hearing in several places. It was something that was in vogue in the early nineties and in this song it adds the gorgeous, mysterious air of a conversation not quite heard, lost in the moment as it is spoken in another space we just can't quite reach. 

Violet is one of the two most beautiful songs of the 64 I have chosen. The other appeared two years earlier (and you'll have to wait for that one till much later 😉). The album's a masterpiece still, but when I put it on everything that comes before (even Crazy) feels to me like a prelude to Violet and my chance to drift into heaven...

Look out also for a stunning live version from Church Studios London from October 1991, where Seal sings accompanied only by a loose jazz-style piano. Seal never leaves anything on the pitch in his vocal - this version shows it. 

Other possibilities from 1991? To be honest, it wasn't a vintage year for me musically. But Two Grey Rooms by Joni Mitchell from Night Ride Home was a contender, evoking in me very similar feelings. Or Texarkana from REM's Out of Time, which evokes very different ones was also under consideration. As was Losing My Religion from the same album (edged out because it was just played to death everywhere).

Till next time...