Seal Says He Thought He Died After Seeing All His Friends at Surprise 60th Birthday Party

Seal thought he died the other day, literally.

On a new episode of the Jennifer Hudson Show, the musician opened up about a recent 60th birthday surprise in February, and how seeing all of his closest pals in one place made him believe he died.

"There was just 200 of just everyone that has meant something at some point or another in my life," Seal said about opening the door to his friend's house and being surprised. "A real cross section of people. And I just had this thought. I was like, 'Oh, I know what's happened. I've died.' Literally, for a split second I thought, 'Oh this is what they talk about, you die and you see all the people.'"

The surprise party went down the way most normally do: Seal's partner took him to his friend's home, made him think he was going to a restaurant to see his children, and instead greeted him with hundreds of loved ones behind a door. "How she managed to keep it a secret from me for so long, I just don't know," he said.

The whole ordeal was captured on TikTok, showing the singer look stunned as he held his chest and saw all of his pals. Of course, after a while, he realized he was — in fact — alive.

@seal

Savor the moments when you feel the most loved. What a memorable surprise! Tomorrow I officially turn 60! 💜

♬ A warm piano instrumental ballad(808701) - NOPPO MUSIC

"Luckily I'm still alive," he said. "I just lost it. You saw me burst out into tears there. I just couldn't hold back the tears because we're all so good at deflecting compliments and deflecting love when it's thrown our way... We're all so good at that."

"But when you see roughly 200 of the people that are really meaningful in your life — people that you've met, you know very well, you've known for a long time and some that you've met in passing but have had an effect on you. When you see them all there, it's like this undeniable wall of love. And then you ask yourself the question, why are they all here? There's only one answer why they're all here and it's because they care. When you accept that, it's really overwhelming."

During a two-part interview on the Think About It podcast back in August, the musician opened up about receiving love — specifically the kind that his fans have shared with him.

"It's like the love that I always wanted from my parents," he told host and tennis star Victoria Azarenka at the time. "The love that I wanted my father to show me. The kind of putting his arm around me and telling me, 'You know, Seal, you did a great job.' Like, I never got that from my father, even on his deathbed."

Over time, however, the musician — whose real name is Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel — learned that love from his fans. "But every time I get a compliment from a fan or from someone, that is like that proverbial hand around my shoulder, telling me, 'You did well.' That is my drive," the "Kiss From a Rose" singer said. "But it only works if I am authentic, and if it initiated from me, for me. The fact that some other people happen to like it is a wonderful by-product."

Elsewhere during the interview, Seal also reminisced on the first time he sang publicly and the emotions that came with it. "I'll emphasize that my parents had never heard me sing. They didn't even know I could sing. But anyway, they were in the audience," he recounted. "I was so afraid and I kind of dragged my feet onto the stage, and I remember walking onto the stage, looking out at all of the parents and teachers in the audience, my parents included. And it being the scariest, loneliest place, and I just wanted the stage to open up and swallow me, and I just wanted to disappear."

He continued, "And I remember being so afraid, and closing my eyes and getting through this song and being lost in it, and finishing it. And it was like, one of those scenes in the movie, where you could hear a pin drop. And at the end of it, everyone clapped, and I opened my eyes and my parents are like, they'd never seen anything like that."

"That place that was the scariest place in the world for me to be [in], [and] all of a sudden, [it] became home, it became the warmest place," he concluded. "Because of the adoration and the love and the acknowledgment, that thing of being seen, I felt something at that point."