Leona Lewis: Spiritless is more like it
Spirit, J Records
Release date: 8 April 2008
By Joe DeRosa
There can be no argument: Leona Lewis can sing. The 23-year-old Londoner has been perfecting her craft since the age of six and has a voice that will knock you on your ass. The problem? With this lackluster debut, will anyone listen?
In 2006, Leona Lewis was the devastatingly-talented winner of series three of The X Factor, the British equivalent of American Idol. During the course of the show, producer Simon Cowell exclaimed that Lewis was one of the best singers he had ever heard. She won the talent competition with 60 percent of the 8 million votes cast in the finale. She sang iconic pop songs like Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Celine Dion’s “All By Myself,” always to a chorus of laud and praise from the judges. When she won, Cowell announced that they would take their time to put together the best album possible. He enlisted the help of an all-star lineup, including writers and producers Akon, Avril Lavigne, Ne-Yo, Dallas Austin, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and, of course, the legendary Clive Davis. One would think that, with a crew like this, the album would go on to sell millions. And it has. Since its November release in the U.K., sales have surpassed the 2.5 million mark. Driven by the powerful single “Bleeding Love,” written by Grammy nominee Ryan Tedder and American pop singer Jesse McCartney, Spirit continues to dominate the British charts, and has become the fastest selling British debut album of all time. I assure you, this is where the excitement ends.
One listen to Spirit calls all of this into question. I don’t mean to be rude, but how could Cowell, the face of the single most-popular show in America, put together such a boring album? Once you make it through “Bleeding Love” and “Better in Time,” the first two tracks of the album and by far the best–although “Forgive Me,” written by Akon, isn’t bad either–the meat and potatoes of the 53-minute CD is dominated by bland, watered down, adult contemporary, R&B blah. Toni Braxton was 30 when she put out this style of music–15 years ago! I mean, come on, Simon. Week after week on Idol, I hear you complain about adolescent singers who come across sounding too old, yet you waste young Lewis’s five-octave vocal range on a remake of “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Couldn’t you find a way to make her more relevant, more contemporary, more hip? This album is, like, the anti-hip.
But while Lewis’s debut lacks any type of spark, it’s really not her fault. She has a fantastic voice but, unfortunately, was given nothing to showcase that on Spirit. If you want to hear what great music hip, young women from the U.K. are making, check out Lilly Allen or Kate Nash. Leave Lewis for your mom or fans of Celine Dion, whose latest effort, by the way, is way more current than Lewis’s ironically-titled album. I hope that some day Lewis will get to show us what she’s truly capable of. Until then, we are left with a lifeless Spirit.