Seal feels "lucky" that he was able to "sing his way out of poverty".
The 60-year-old musician - whose real name is Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel - was brought up by a foster family in London before performing in local clubs and eventually found success in the 1980s and admitted that he has achieved things he could only have "dreamed of."
He told The Guardian newspaper: “I mainly just feel lucky that I was able to sing my way out of poverty and sing my way into people’s favour. The last 30 years of my life have been exceptional – I have done things I could have only dreamed about.”
However, the 'Kiss from a Rose' hitmaker - who has sold 20 million records worldwide - went on to add that he detests the word "celebrity" and that he prefers to define himself through his musical abilities.
He added: "It was a pain in the a***. I can’t stand the word celebrity because it has such a negative connotation of implying being famous for the sake of being famous. As far as I was concerned, I was always a musician and I have never considered myself a celebrity. I don’t need to look in OK! magazine to understand who I am. I am no longer in that circus.
"When I perform, I sing to remind people to connect with each other because I have a lot of faith in us as a species,” he says. “I think we do some pretty screwed-up things, but at our core we are of love and that is the purpose of life. The fact that I can sing and have that love reciprocated is extremely rare. I do for a living something that, in essence, is who I am.”
