I heard "A Change is Gonna Come" played on the R&B station I listen to and was surprised the artist was Seal. I thought he did a great job on the Sam Cooke classic. I then listened to his rendition of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions "People Get Ready." At that point, I knew I was going to buy this CD regardless of the low ratings viewers have given this album. Obviously, Seal fans are used to his "rock" style and aren't ready for such a soulful, classic, melodic CD. The brotha really goes deep into the roots of African-American R&B of the earlier groups, puts his own spin on them, but his delivery is superb. So, old school baby-boomers and post-boomers will really appreciate this CD so aptly named "Soul." Soul it is, and definitely R&B! I listened to every track and never took it out of my CD player while I ran errands for about four hours. Frankly, I was sad when Track 12 played because I knew I had to listen to the CD again. Beautiful CD! Old Schoolers -- you'll love it it if you like the ballads of Wilson Pickett, Al Green, Sam (the Impressions), and of course, the wonderful balladeer Sam Cooke. "I Can't Stand the Rain" is sung like a man (as opposed to Tina Turner) would sing the song, and I didn't have a problem with his rendition. I love this CD, and I've never bought a Seal CD in my life! Also, you'll remember Luther Vandross covered a lot of songs and took home lots of Grammy's. So, if you can cover a great song but add your own flavor, what's wrong with that? Beautiful music remains beautiful if the artist can sing!

One of the mistakes that these so called reviewers make is rating each song as better or worse than the original version. Seal puts his on stamp on each and that is what makes each song so good. When I heard his version of "Walk on by", I did not like it. Now after listening to it over and over, Dionne Warwick's take on it seems lacking. Cut the guy some slack - each one of his CDs has had its own flavor and I appreciate the effort that it must take to redfine his style each pass through the recording studio. The biggest mistake a recording artist can make (in my opinion) is to crank out the same predictable stuff. With Seal you never know what to expect. He could record Disney's "Its a Small World" and make it sound sweet!

Soul is a disc that you really want to like - stellar production - amazing talent - legendary material - almost guaranteeing that Seal's tribute to the golden era of Soul and R&B would easily score five stars on technical merit alone.

So where's my enthusiasm? Upon further review, I suspect it was left at the door with the headliner who, while making an airtight composite of a great album, fell prey to the fatal flaw of most artists who take on an entire recording of cover material - holding the songs so tight that they forget to forego the Kareoke and leave little of themselves on the final take.

To be fair, there's not one truly bad cut on the entire disc (I Can't Stand The Rain and If You Don't Know Me By Now are standouts) however, Soul projects an overwhelming "in the moment" feel - a coolly professional encounter that leaves no lasting impression.

Instead of simply pulling all the levers in his quest to "manufacture" a great record, Seal would have been better served bringing his heart as well as his body to the sessions. There's actually much here to like - just not much to remember.

First, let me put this in context. I think Seal has one of the best voices in pop music today. I love most of his CDs. This CD, unfortunately, is a complete misfire. I tried to think about how I could condense the problem in a few statements. It comes down to 3 things:

1. The original songs have already been performed at such an extraordinary level of artistic performance by the original artists, that it's going to be tough to out perform them here.

2. The arrangements are just lackluster and completely boring. Seal's voice can't fix that problem. Listening to this CD was like hanging out in the waiting room at the doctor's office.

3. Seal's interpretation of these songs is so uniteresting and so "middle of the road", that I found myself switching the display on the time counter on the CD player to see how much longer the track would last.

I really love his voice, but this is incredibly boring.

The man has this great voice and now he's done justice to some great standards. Check out "I'm Afraid Of The Rain"...........awesome!