Seal never intended to make his recently released CD, "Soul," a collection of his versions of 11 songs from the classic 1960s/70s soul era. In fact, he was all set to go on vacation with his wife, model Heidi Klum, and their children when the muse intervened.

Initially, Seal simply intended to record his version of the Sam Cooke song "A Change Is Gonna Come," to honor the change in the political/social landscape that was occurring during the fall presidential campaign.

"I felt that this huge shift, this huge paradigm shift going on globally, not just in America, and people were kind of ready to take responsibility and instigate change as opposed to just kind of talking about it," Seal said in a recent phone interview.

"And if there was a soundtrack to that sort of general consensus, it would be a song which was perhaps more relevant today than when it was written, such as 'A Change Is Gonna Come.' So I felt compelled to cover this song in an effort to sort of contribute to this change, this shift."

The initial idea was simply to record the song with producer David Foster and make a low-budget video.

"My intention was literally to just throw it up on the Internet and go on vacation with my family," Seal said.

But then Foster had other ideas.

"The next thing you know, (Foster is saying) 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. I haven't heard you sing like this in a while,' " Seal said. "'I've got some other songs for you to sing.' And literally three or four weeks later we had an album. So the intention was never a Machiavellian one. It was never calculated. It was because I just got caught up in the moment, and that was it."

Seal wasn't complaining that the inspiration to record "Soul" struck when it did and changed his vacation plans. The CD has become one of his most commercially successful albums, and in talking with the Grammy-winning singer, it was clear that recording these timeless songs with Foster was a hugely enjoyable and satisfying experience.

The man born in London 46 years ago as Sealhenry Samuel noted that he considers Foster to be the finest producer he's worked with in a career that took off in 1991 when the song "Crazy," from his self-titled debut CD, became a Top 10 hit.

He has since released five additional studio records that have deftly blended soul, folk, dance music and pop, and had hits with "A Kiss From a Rose" (which won three Grammy awards in 1996) and "A Prayer for the Dying."

"He's the complete package," Seal said of Foster, who has produced Celine Dion, Chicago, Barbra Streisand and dozens of other stars. "Normally you'll come across a producer who has one, two, and if you're lucky, maybe three (special) attributes. But David Foster is a brilliant arranger. He's a brilliant writer. He's a brilliant player, a brilliant player. He has incredible social skills and an incredible ability to understand and assess the people who he's working with. He also has an incredible ability to see the finish line before, in some cases before we've even started the process. He can see it. And that's incredibly difficult to do. On top of all of that, he's a really fantastic person."

The "Soul" CD came together very quickly for Seal and Foster. Working from an initial list of about 40 songs, Seal and Foster settled on 15 that seemed to best suit Seal's voice and Foster's skills as an arranger. After about three weeks of recording, the CD was finished.

Among the songs that made it onto the CD are James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's World," Ann Peebles' "I Can't Stand the Rain," Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long," Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' 'If You Don't Know Me By Now" and the Impressions' "People Get Ready."

"The criteria was very simple," Seal said, in explaining the approach to recording the songs. "What we wanted to do was, we wanted to first of all honor and respect the songs. … Songs are the things that really inspired me to become a musician in the first place. The concept of the song, once I understood what it could do, how powerful it was, how great of a communicator it could be and the incredible ability the song has to express oneself, once I understood those things, I was hooked. I wanted to be a recording artist.

"And so our first priority in making this record and selecting these songs was to first of all be respectful to the songs," he said. "That meant that we weren't going to cover the songs if we felt that we couldn't offer some kind of justification for doing it in the first place. If we felt that we couldn't bring something new to it, there was absolutely no reason, other than commercial reasons, to cover the songs."

That meant that for the most part, Foster and Seal stayed true to the famous versions of the songs, although Foster makes his presence felt with some lush orchestral instrumentation and some tweaks to the arrangements that play to Seal's vocal talents.

On "I Can't Stand the Rain," Foster added a vocal intro that finds his voice stretching to a sharp falsetto. On "A Change Is Gonna Come," the song features a jazzy horn-spiked ending that wasn't present on the original. Foster also wrote a new string-laden intro to "It's a Man's Man's Man's World."

Vocally, Seal wasn't interested in taking too many liberties with the material.

"I really don't like when I hear a cover of a song where somebody has just changed the arrangement or done something vocally just for the point of actually changing something, or fixing something that wasn't broken in the first place," he said. "You know, when you hear some kind of quasi-R&B singers, or some modern R&B singers … it becomes an exercise in vocal gymnastics or vocal agility. And they're singing a song, and you wonder where the melody is, you wonder where it's gone. I've never really understood that. And you hear some singers with really great voices who just will not sing the melody in the song."

Given his passion for the project and the success of the CD, it's no surprise to find that Seal is featuring the "Soul" songs on tour with his versatile four-piece band. But he's also rediscovering some earlier material.

"It's the 'Soul' tour, and obviously we're going to be playing a lot of songs from this current album," Seal said. "The interesting thing about it is in doing this album, it's really reminded me of how it isn't really that much different from a lot of the songs off of my first and second and the fourth album. Soul is an attitude. … I don't really see it as a genre of music. It's music that is of the soul and intended for the soul. So arguably, you could say that a song like 'Love's Divine' or even 'A Kiss From a Rose' is soul music.

"So I guess what it's made me do is revisit a bunch of old songs that I haven't put in (to the show) for a while."

Seal

When: 7:30 p.m. May 3

Where: Valley View Casino, 16300 Nyemii Pass Road, Valley Center

Tickets: $55-$75

Info: (619) 220-8497 or valleyviewcasino.com/entertainment