Leona Lewis has, in many ways, single-handedly turned The X Factor into a
global concern. Launched in the UK by Simon Cowell in 2004, the first two series
produced barely serviceable winners in the shape of Steve Brookstein, a sort of
Michael Bublé for the Pizza Express touring circuit, and a low-cost Justin
Timberlake in the form of Shayne Ward. While they both achieved moderate success
in Britain, their chances of cracking the US seemed about as likely as Sharon
Osbourne having a nice word to say about Dannii Minogue. So when Lewis, an
office assistant from east London, was crowned the winner in 2006, it looked as
if she and her impeccable voice would become nothing more than the Argos
alternative to Mariah Carey. Then something amazing happened: her potential was
transformed into actual stardom.
By the end of 2007, Lewis was, as her press releases still maintain, a global
superstar: her debut single Bleeding Love topped the charts in 35 countries,
including the US, where it sold 4m copies, and it was the biggest-selling single
of 2007 in the UK. Her subsequent album, Spirit, became the fastest-selling
debut album of all time in the UK going on to sell more than 3m copies in
Britain and 8m worldwide. The X Factor was suddenly responsible for a legitimate
global phenomenon, cementing its reason for being – and saddling Lewis with a
curse she’s never quite shaken off. Since Bleeding Love, it’s been a case of
ever-diminishing returns for Lewis, with her new single, Fire Under My Feet –
the first to be taken from her forthcoming fifth album, I Am, and the first
released outside of her contract with Syco – limping into the charts at No
51.
So what went wrong? Let’s start with Bleeding Love, one of the greatest, most
immaculate songs of the past 20 years. From its church organ intro to that
booming, relatable chorus, Bleeding Love’s perfection is undiminished. But how
do you follow such a blockbuster hit? Well, you don’t. In fact, Lewis should
have retired the day it came out. While subsequent singles from Spirit performed
well in the UK, it remains her only US top 10 hit, and its ubiquity has haunted
her ever since.
It didn’t help when she tried to replicate its success with Happy, the lead
single from her second album, Echo. Britney Spears attempted to follow the
career-defining Baby One More Time with the lead single from her second album by
essentially remaking it in the form of Oops! … I Did It Again. With Spears,
however, the pop mimicry was obvious but the new song was just as great as Baby
One More Time. Leona’s Happy, however, was just a poor man’s Bleeding Love, a
message to the casual, one-album-a-year brigade that they needn’t bother with
the new record because it’s more or less the same as the one they’ve already
got. Echo sent her on a UK arena tour, but it felt like it was happening off the
back of that one single.
By the time Glassheart came out in 2012, the gap between the “global
superstar” tag The X Factor rolled out every year and Lewis’s actual position in
the pop galaxy was so vast you could have fitted Simon Cowell’s ego in it. While
her lead single Trouble was a top 10 hit in the UK, the album was never released
in the US, and the campaign stalled following Lovebird’s inability to make the
top 40.
Leona’s name was trotted out every time anyone dared suggest The X Factor
doesn’t produce global stars, which must have made One Direction’s
globe-straddling dominance something of a relief. Trouble also epitomised
Leona’s other problem: her flawless personality. “I’m a whole lot of trouble,”
trills the chorus, which is quite a stretch for a singer whose public persona is
so safe and restrained. In a pop world of Mileys and Rihannas, Leona Lewis feels
like that strait-laced older cousin who’d dob you in to your parents if she
caught you smoking. Even attempts at injecting some personality into her
performances mostly backfired, with this version of the excellent One More Sleep
on The X Factor coming across like a breakdown at an office Christmas party.
Christmas, With Love, which came out in 2013, was her last album for Syco,
and the whole situation reeked of gritted-teeth contract fulfilment. Lewis since
moved to Island Records, where the promotion of her new album has been infused
with negativity. Early leaks to the tabloids from well-placed sources talked
about how the title track is allegedly a stinging attack on Cowell and how free
she is from the shackles of Syco (“I am breathing without you / I am somebody
without you / I am free without you / I am stronger without you”). While the
emotions are likely to be about another relationship altogether, the message it
sends out to those who still connect Leona to The X Factor, and who don’t follow
the ins and outs of a career, is one of “singer turns on the man who made her
famous”. That alone is a huge hurdle to overcome when you’ve slipped from pop’s
A-list.
Haunting the whole scenario, however, is the simple fact that Fire Under My
Feet isn’t strong enough to make its mark in today’s overcrowded pop market.
According to the website Compare My Radio, BBC Radio 1 have only played it twice
in the past month, while YouTube views for the video are under 2m. It’s also
hard to shake the fact that it sounded better when Adele did it as Rolling in
the Deep a few years ago. Still, at least we’ll always have Bleeding
Love.
