Commitment is as much about looking back to who he was as celebrating the contentment he feels today. Seal came to the sessions with 41 songs at least partly written – unprecedented for an artist who would struggle to come up with a dozen strong ideas every three or four years. "What's changed is me," he says. "Trevor and David were dealing with two different people."
Seal is still driven by his perfectionist muse, but family life has meant rethinking his priorities. Rather than booking a studio, he rented a house in the town of Montecito, with the plan being to live there while recording. But the pursuit of art had to take second place to his responsibilities as husband and father.
"It was just an hour away from Los Angeles," he says of the house-turned-studio, "so I did come home, to be with my family. () is something that you love doing, but second to the thing that you really love, which is your wife and kids. I mean, it's only music – it's not that important."