Tame Impala Covers Seal's Kiss From a Rose on Like a Version

A fourth trip to the triple j studio

Tame Impala went back to triple j's Like a Version studio to cover Seal's 1994 ballad "Kiss From a Rose." It was Kevin Parker's fourth appearance on the long-running Australian radio series.14 Parker and his live band played the song first and then did a pared-back version of their own "Dracula." Coverage described both arrangements as stripped-back and built around synths.35 Billboard dated the session to Friday, October 30, the day before Halloween, and The Music Network also tied the timing of "Dracula" to the holiday.53

On the surface this is a routine radio session, the kind of thing a touring act does between legs. The song choice is what makes it more than that. It connects to Parker's own history as a listener, to the band's long relationship with the series, and to an unusually successful year for the project.

Why this song

The outlets agreed on the main reason for the pick. "Kiss From a Rose" was on the first CD Parker ever bought, the Batman Forever soundtrack.35 Billboard added that the same soundtrack introduced him to U2, the Flaming Lips and Nick Cave.5 JamBase reported that Parker played the disc over and over as a child and learned every song on it.8

Parker's interview with the station shows the band had doubts about the choice. Several members suggested the song on their own, then wondered whether they could actually pull it off.8 Parker said the group accepted that nobody in the band can sing like Seal, and decided to perform it simply as "a bunch of Aussie blokes."910 He also argued that the song is harder than it sounds. It uses few chords, he said, but its rhythm shifts in unexpected ways, which gives it a "proggy" quality.810

He also explained how he picks covers in general. He looks for a great song that doesn't get enough credit, perhaps because its production now sounds dated or because listeners overlooked it at the time, and tries to show it in a different light.910 That seems an odd description of "Kiss From a Rose," which, as several outlets pointed out, topped the Billboard Hot 100 and won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.18 A more charitable reading is that Parker was talking about the song's reputation. After decades as a karaoke staple and a pop-culture punchline, it may be under-respected as a piece of writing even though it sold hugely. His comments about its rhythmic complexity support that reading. This is our interpretation, not something Parker said.

The song's history fits that idea too. JamBase recounted that Seal wrote it in the late 1980s while living in a squat, layering his own voice on a four-track recorder to imitate orchestral parts, and then shelved it. Trevor Horn later brought it onto Seal's 1994 second album.8 Its breakthrough came when Joel Schumacher used it over the closing credits of Batman Forever.8 Seal later credited Schumacher with taking a chance on a song that wasn't easy to like at first.10

Faithful or reworked? The reviews split

The coverage disagreed most about how much Tame Impala actually changed the song. Consequence said the cover carries Parker's trademarks but stays close to the original, closer to Tame Impala standing in for Seal than to a reinvention.1 Billboard and The Music Network described a song "reworked" into a stripped-back, synth-driven version.53 Triple j's own write-up said the band added ethereal harmonies to the mid-tempo ballad.4

These accounts don't fully contradict each other. They suggest the band changed the texture rather than the structure: new harmonies and synths on a song whose shape is left alone. Parker's own comments back that up. A band that has given up on matching Seal's voice, and that admires the song's rhythmic surprises, has little reason to rebuild it. On that reading, Consequence's "faithful" is the more accurate description of the arrangement, and the "reworked" framing elsewhere describes the sound more than the song.

A pattern across Parker's covers

Parker's Like a Version history goes back more than a decade. Tame Impala first appeared in 2013 with OutKast's "Prototype" and returned in 2015 with Kylie Minogue's "Confide in Me."15 The dates diverge for the third visit, a cover of Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You": Consequence puts it in 2020, while Billboard says 2021.15 We couldn't settle the date here.

Consequence noticed a pattern that most other outlets missed. All three of Parker's covers of '90s songs on the show are of tracks released in 1994.1 It is probably a coincidence, but it fits with the nostalgia behind this latest pick. Parker is choosing songs from the years when he was forming his taste, and the Batman Forever story is the clearest example yet.

The four choices are also very different from one another: Atlanta hip-hop, Australian dance-pop, British indie soul and an orchestral pop ballad. That fits a project whose latest album leans hard into club music. It also helps explain why a Seal ballad doesn't sound out of place next to "Dracula". Parker said the two songs share an arrangement approach, a lot of shared vocals and a heavy use of synths, which made them a natural pair.98

The context: Tame Impala's biggest year

Several reports framed the session as the end of a career-best stretch.53 Deadbeat, Tame Impala's fifth album and its first since 2020's The Slow Rush, came out on Columbia on October 17, 2025.1114 Before release, it was billed as "club-psych" music inspired by Western Australia's bush doof and rave culture.17

"Dracula" has driven most of that success. Billboard reported that the song first came out as a solo single in October 2025. A February remix featuring Jennie pushed it into the Hot 100 top 10 for the first time in the project's history, peaking at No. 5.5 Another report said it also reached No. 1 on Pop Airplay and on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, and spent more than six months at the top of Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.6 At home, The Music Network called "Dracula" Tame Impala's biggest single yet, both in Australia and internationally, and noted that it placed third in triple j's Hottest 100.3 That gives the triple j performance extra weight. The station's audience already voted the song near the top of its countdown, so playing it in the studio closes a loop.

The session also came right after the Australian leg of the Deadbeat Tour. That run had several arena nights each in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and ended with two hometown shows in Perth on October 24 and 25.1 The Music Network called it the band's biggest Australian tour yet, played to sold-out arenas with Ninajirachi as special guest.3 It also cited a five-star Rolling Stone AU/NZ review of the Brisbane opener that praised the visuals and production.3

The larger tour began at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on October 27, 2025. It is set to run through five legs and 91 shows before finishing at NOS Alive in Lisbon on July 10, 2027.11 Consequence reported that the band will return in May 2027 with UK and European arena dates, followed by summer festivals.1 SPIN and Yahoo went further and said Tame Impala is widely rumored to be among the headliners for Coachella 2027.9 That remains unconfirmed.

Waiting on Seal

One loose end is whether Seal will respond. Parker said he has met the singer, called him an amazing artist and vocalist, and guessed he is probably tired of hearing covers of the song.10 He also remembered a video in which Seal imagined Parker telling him "good job, cool song bro." Parker wanted to reply to it but never did, and said he hopes Seal sees the cover and approves.910

The takeaway

It would be easy to dismiss this as a novelty, a psych-rock band singing the Batman Forever ballad on Halloween weekend. We read it as a confident move. Tame Impala now has a Hot 100 top-five hit and has just finished its biggest home tour, so it doesn't need to prove anything on triple j. That frees Parker to pick a song tied to his childhood and play it straight, without trying to compete with Seal's voice. The cover's restraint, which Consequence called faithfulness, looks deliberate.1 Parker's approach in this session is to take a familiar song seriously while not taking the band too seriously, and he said as much when he described the band as "not too precious."10