Born in McCamey, Texas, in 1948, Dan Seals first rose to prominence as one half of the soft rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley before transforming into a country-pop artist who dominated the latter half of the 1980s. His brother Jim Seals later achieved fame in the duo Seals & Crofts. The siblings performed together with their parents in the Seals Family Band, where Dan played string bass, but after the parents divorced he spent years traveling with his mother until they settled in Dallas in 1958. There, during his teenage years, he played in garage bands and met John Ford Coley; the two first worked together in the Shimmerers, which recorded demos in 1965, and then in Southwest F.O.B., which reached the charts in 1967 with “The Smell of Incense.” They left to form a duo in 1969, endured lean years, and saw an early-1970s A&M contract collapse before breaking through in the late 1970s with the signature soft-rock singles “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” and “Nights Are Forever Without You.”
Seals launched a solo career in 1980, signing with Atlantic and releasing his debut album Stones under the England Dan name. A protracted IRS dispute in 1981 stripped him of nearly all his possessions. The follow-up album Harbinger failed commercially, prompting him to redirect his efforts toward country music, where he tailored his approach for radio while preserving his characteristic soft tone. On Liberty/Capitol he scored two Top Ten country hits in 1984 with “(You Bring Out) The Wild Side of Me” and “God Must Be a Cowboy.” Similar success arrived in 1985 with “My Old Yellow Car” and “My Baby’s Got Good Timing,” followed by a number-one duet with Marie Osmond, “Meet Me in Montana.” That breakthrough launched nine consecutive chart-toppers: “Bop” and “Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)” in 1986; “I Will Be There,” “Three Time Loser,” and “You Still Move Me” in 1987; “Addicted” and “One Friend” in 1988; and “Big Wheels in the Moonlight” in 1989. Two further number ones followed in 1990—“Good Times” and “Love on Arrival.”
The sudden ascendancy of Garth Brooks altered the country landscape, rendering Seals’ style unfashionable. A 1991 move to Warner Brothers yielded modest results, and although he issued occasional recordings on independent labels in the latter half of the 1990s, he spent the remainder of the decade primarily as a touring artist.
