Song of the Day 6/8: Seals and Crofts, “We May Never Pass This Way (Again)”

Jim Seals, who died Monday at age 80, wasn’t just half of the ’70s soft rock duo Seals and Crofts. He and his musical partner were also among the best-known adherents of the Baháʼí faith, which does indeed hold that we won’t be reincarnated, but we will experience some kind of life after death.

The duo’s music certainly has endured long beyond their hit-making heyday, because the oxymoronically named “soft rock” sound so popular in the ’70s never really disappeared — you can still hear hits like “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl” pretty frequently on radio stations devoted to the format formally known as Adult Contemporary (AC).

In a sense, Seals and Crofts underwent a musical rebirth. The two Texans moved to California and joined the Champs, the California outfit that had had a No. 1 hit with “Tequila” in 1958, with Seals on saxophone and Crofts on drums. They left in 1963 and kicked around for a few years before switching to guitar and mandolin and the soft-rock sound so popular in Southern California at the time. As Seals and Crofts they released three albums that didn’t sell much before their 1972 breakthrough with “Summer Breeze.” That single reached No. 6 on the Hot 100, as did “Diamond Girl.”

“We May Never Pass This Way,” the follow-up to “Diamond Girl,” was a No. 2 AC hit (No. 21 overall) in 1973, but the duo’s good fortune hit a wall with their 1974 single, “Unborn Child.” Written in response the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the song expressed their faith’s opposition to abortion, which split their audience. They had a few more hits before disbanding in 1980 under the onslaught of disco.