Play it Again, Sam #8b - "Fly Like an Eagle"

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We were already groovy as hell on today's Play it Again, Sam, but we're about to take that up a notch! We are at #8b, the "cover" portion: Seal's cover of The Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle." There was a time when British soul singer Seal, he of the dynamite, soulful voice, was as big as it gets. Working alongside uber producer Trevor Horn, the man was a hit machine, as well as a Three-time Brit Award and four-time Grammy Award winner. And as if that weren't enough, he was also married, long-term, to Heidi Klum! Dominque Trenier, Executive Producer of the 1996 movie, Space Jam, asked Seal to record a cover of Steve Miller's classic for the film's soundtrack (I'm guessing that this might be due to the fact that the movie's younger target audience was more likely to identify with a more modern Seal update than wondering just "who the hell is Steve Miller?!") Instead of working with Horn, as was Seal's custom, the cover was produced by Rashad "Ringo" Smith. The pair stayed fairly true to Miller's original formula, with trippy, spacey synthesizers (they even sampled Miller's "Space Intro" into the chorus) and a mellow, funky groove, but also gave it a definite modern R&B update to take advantage of Seal's vocal style. Seal's version was a big hit in it's own right, reaching #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #2 and #7 in Canada and Belgium, respectively. All totalled, the cover charted in a total of eight countries. Seal has said that Miller himself approved of the cover, and actually went so far as to call the singer to personally thank him and tell him that it's his favorite of all the covers he's heard. High praise coming from the man that made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for writing and performing classic songs such as this! (Info verified by Wikipedia)