Dan Seals, R.I.P.

Dan Gibson | March 27, 2009 9:00 am

Dan Seals, ’70s soft-rock one-hit wonder and ’80s country star, died on Wednesday after a struggle with mantle cell lymphoma. There aren’t too many second acts in popular music, but after one very big song (the No. 2 hit “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”) and a few other top ten singles as “England Dan” with John Ford Coley, Dan Seals reinvented himself as a country star slowly building an audience, eventually topping the county charts eleven times before seeing his popularity slip away by the early nineties. The late eighties are largely overlooked as far as country music’s timeline goes, and largely for good reason as the popular music of that era would have confused and frightened the originators of the genre, but Seals’ biggest hit “Bop” is one of those songs that occasionally gets stuck in my head for an entire day. Buried among the synths and odd stylistic choices of the era are earnest, well performed vocals of a man who made the most of a second run at music fame. Several songs from both eras of his career are below the cut.

Dan Seals, “Bop”: