Leona Lewis – British Singer
Leona Louise Lewis (born 3 April 1985 in London, United Kingdom) is a Grammy Award nominated British pop/R&B singer and songwriter. She was discovered in the reality TV show The X Factor and went on to win the show. The prize she received was a £1 million contract to Simon Cowell’s record label, Sony BMG. Her debut single in the United Kingdom, “A Moment Like This“, broke a world record after it was downloaded over 50,000 times within thirty minutes of its release.
Her second single, “Bleeding Love”, was the biggest-selling single of 2007 in her home country, topped over thirty international singles charts including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, France and Germany, and has since become the biggest selling single of the twenty-first century, propelling Lewis to worldwide superstardom.
Her debut album, Spirit, was released throughout Europe in 2007 and became the fastest-selling debut album ever in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. Released in North America in 2008, Spirit debuted at number one on the United States’ Billboard 200 album chart, making Lewis the first British solo artist to top the chart with a debut album.
At the age of five, Leona Lewis attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and later the Italia Conti Academy and the BRIT School. There she learned guitar and piano and also worked hard to write her own songs in order to be taken seriously as an accomplished musician.
She wrote her first song at the age of twelve, and won a number of talent competitions. After leaving school, Lewis took a number of jobs to pay to get into a recording studio, including waitressing and several receptionist jobs.
She wrote, recorded and produced a number of songs including a demo album called Twilight. When she was fifteen years old, she recorded a version of Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” with music producer Marley J. Wills, who commented that “Leona could hit the notes and I think she did it better than the original.”
Unable to secure a contract, Lewis considered placing her music career on hold to attend university, before her boyfriend persuaded her to enter The X Factor.
2006: The X Factor
In 2006, Lewis auditioned for the third series of The X Factor, singing “Over the Rainbow”. She made it through to the final stages and was announced the winner on 16 December 2006, winning a £1 million recording contract, therefore becoming the first female winner of The X Factor and the third winner after Shayne Ward and Steve Brookstein. She was mentored by Simon Cowell.
Lewis’ voice was consistently praised by all three judges — Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh. Occasionally, she was compared with divas such as Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Lewis was also criticised, by some of the judges and in the press, for her lack of self-confidence. Vocal coach Mark Hudson also criticised a lack of star quality. On the final night of the show, Take That joined Lewis on stage for a duet of their song “A Million Love Songs”. After the performance, singer Gary Barlow told Cowell, “you’ve got a big responsibility because this girl is probably fifty times better than any contestant you have ever had on this show, and it’s your responsibility to make her the best record you can, so please do that.”
On the Oprah Winfrey Show on the 17 of March 2008, Simon Cowell said that it was during Lewis’ performance of “Summertime” in the third live round of The X Factor (broadcast 28 October 2006) that he “could see her transform from a great singer into a superstar”.
After The X Factor
Over one-million copies of the winner’s single, a cover of Kelly Clarkson’s first single “A Moment Like This”, were pre-ordered by stores, although at the time, the winner of the show had not been announced and it was unknown who would be releasing the single. “A Moment Like This” was released on CD on 20 December 2006, and was available as a digital download from midnight on 17 December. It broke a world record after it was downloaded fifty-thousand times in thirty minutes. On 24 December, “A Moment Like This” was crowned the 2006 UK Christmas number-one single, having sold 105,381 copies, beating Take That’s single “Patience”, and outselling the rest of the Top 40’s sales combined. It was reported that one chain was “shifting more than 100 of her CDs a minute”. The single became the biggest-downloaded song in 2006, beating Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”. The single stayed at number one for four weeks, and also stayed at the top spot in the Irish Singles Chart for six weeks. It went on to sell in the region of 1,000,000 copies.
A four-track download EP, “It’s All for You”, that she recorded before entering The X Factor was released digitally on 18 December 2006, through The Schizofreniks record label. The single was banned from several online stores by Lewis’s record label, Sony BMG, and was therefore unable to chart.
In February 2007, Lewis signed a £5 million ($9.7 million) five album contract in the United States with Clive Davis’s record label, J Records, and showcased for several American music executives at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.
On 16 January 2007, “A Moment Like This” was shortlisted for the British Single award at the 2007 BRIT Awards. It made it to the second round but was eliminated and did not make it to the final selection. In May, it was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Best Selling British Single.
Personal life
Lewis lives in Hackney with her boyfriend Lou Al-Chamaa, an electrician of Syrian-Arab descent, whom she has known since she was approximately ten years old. Lewis also lives with her pet dog, a baby rottweiler called Rome.
A vegetarian since she was 12, Lewis won PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian along with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis in 2008.
Lewis is a close friend of Sugababe Keisha Buchanan; in fact, Lewis brought Buchanan and her current boyfriend together.
other Information
- Birth name Leona Louise Lewis
- Born 3 April 1985 (1985-04-03)
- Islington, London, United Kingdom
- Genre(s) Pop, R&B
- Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter
- Voice type(s) Soprano
- Years active 2000 – present
- Label(s) Sony, Syco, J Records
- Website www.leonalewismusic.co.uk
- Leona Lewis - Music Crunch
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