Tame Impala recorded a cover of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" for Triple J's Like a Version, Kevin Parker's fourth turn on the Australian radio series. The band also played a stripped-back version of "Dracula," the Jennie collaboration that has become a fixture of the current live set.
Parker told Triple J the Seal song was a childhood favorite, tied to seeing Batman Forever in a theater, and that the soundtrack was the first CD he ever bought. "I used to listen to it back to back," he said. The choice carried its own hesitation: Parker said the band worried none of them could match Seal's voice. "Once we were content with, 'Oh, it's us, it's a bunch of Aussie blokes doing it', then I think we were at peace with it," he said.
The performance keeps the original's architecture, harmonized and slightly hazy, with Parker's strumming the clearest signature. Around the two-minute-thirty-eight mark he changes a lyric to "All I want's a fucking kiss from a rose," a small rupture he greets with a smirk, and Triple J let it stand.
That first CD, a mid-nineties soundtrack assembled around a film, taught Parker how an album works as a whole object: sequencing, front-to-back listening, the way one song sets up the next. The habit runs through Tame Impala's catalog, and it sits behind the band's recent staging choices too: the circular stage that reordered the catalog on the Deadbeat tour, and the first live airing of "Dracula" with Jennie. Parker has also moved to limit fan interactions at hotels and airports on that tour.
For all the reverence Parker brings to Seal's melody, the cover's most telling moment is that unscripted expletive. It's a reminder that even when he's honoring someone else's song, Parker can't resist leaving his own mark. The question now is whether this one-off will remain a curiosity or seep into Tame Impala's live sets, where such gestures tend to take root.
