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Singer Seal opens up his soul

Singer says honest songs of heartbreak 'cathartic' in new album.

Writing songs about love and heartbreak for his first album since divorcing model wife Heidi Klum was a "cathartic experience" for Seal.
7, released on Friday, is the 52-year old musician's first album in four years and comes after he and German-born Klum went their separate ways in 2012 after seven years of marriage.
"You have a series of events take place and ... at some point you write about them when you feel compelled to do so," the singer said.
"Obviously there's a kind of digestion period that happens where you have to insert that period and step away from it for a time and then come back to it and write objectively as opposed to subjectively."
Known for his silky voice and hits such as the Grammy Award winning Kiss from a Rose, Seal has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.
"Some people, when something is weighing on them ... they go and see a therapist or a psychiatrist or a shrink of some sort. I write songs and that right there is a very cathartic experience," Seal said.
"But there are caveats ... It's only cathartic if you are brutally honest with yourself first and foremost."
Seal reunites with his Kiss from a Rose collaborator, producer Trevor Horn, for 7. The heartbreak theme features in tracks such as The Big Love has Died, a ballad about losing someone close to you.
"It's a reality that's how we feel sometimes ... when we've been in something that hasn't quite worked out or there was so much love and now there's a vacuum where that love was," he said.