" Kiss from a Rose " was written in 1987 , several years prior to the release of Seal 's eponymous debut album from 1991 . After writing the song , Seal felt " embarrassed by it " and " threw the tape in the corner . " Seal did not present it to producer Trevor Horn until the recording sessions for '' Seal II '' . In 2015 , Seal said of the song : " To be honest , I was never really that proud of it , though I like what Trevor did with the recording . He turned that tape from my corner into another 8 million record sales and my name became a household name . " " Kiss from a Rose " was the second single taken from the '' Batman Forever '' film soundtrack , and topped the US '' Billboard '' Hot 100 for one week in August 1995 . It also went to number four on the UK Singles Chart , where it had originally reached number 20 in 1994 . It also was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Song from a Movie in the 1996 edition . Seal talked about the long , strange journey that the song went through on '' The Brian McKnight Show '' season finale that aired 30 May 2010 . He described how the song initially dropped out of the charts shortly after its release . Joel Schumacher subsequently called Seal , and requested use of the song to play over a love scene between the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Val Kilmer in '' Batman Forever '' . Although the song was eventually not incorporated into this scene , it was instead used to play over the end credits ; Seal believes this change contributed to the song 's eventual popularity
1996 edition
1996 MTV Movie Awards
Kiss from a Rose