FEATURE:
Second Spin
Leona Lewis - Spirit
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THERE are two reasons…
why I have selected Leona Lewis’ debut album, Spirit, in this Second Spin. For one, it was very underrated and I think it deserves some new focus and play. Many critics did love the album, but there were a few that were mixed or had some negative things to say. It is a shame because, whether you are a Leona Lewis fan or not, there is more than enough to enjoy and respect about her debut. Her fifth studio album, I Am, was released in 2015. I wonder whether she will record another studio album. Let us hope so! Spirit came out on 9th November, 2007. As it is fifteen soon, I wanted to include it for reassessment. For a bit of background: Lewis achieved recognition when she won the third series of The X Factor in 2006, earning a recording contract with Syco Music. Her winner's single, a good cover of Kelly Clarkson's A Moment Like This, reached number one in the U.K. and broke a world record by reaching 50,000 digital downloads within thirty minutes! In February 2007, Lewis signed a five-album contract in the United States with Clive Davis's record label, J Records. In spite of the fact there was so much anticipation around Spirit, many critics did not give it the praise it deserves. The public reacted differently. Reaching number one in the U.S. and U.K., Spirit was the sixth-biggest-selling of 2008. It was best-selling debut album by a female artist in the U.K., and one of the best-selling albums in U.K. chart history. The best-selling album by a female artist in the twenty-first century, the incredible and unbeatable success of Spirit contrasts to the critical reaction. Maybe there was a lot of hype and too much in the way of numbers and record breaking for critics to judge it on its own merit.
I think many were reacting to Spirit in the context of The X Factor and seeing it as a talent show album. Instead, listen to Spirit as an album by a great young artist whose incredible vocal abilities are at the fore. Even though Lewis did not write a lot of the material on Spirit, it does sound very pure and personal. Not a case of a reality show winner singing songs by others in a rather lacklustre way. She makes every track her own! I know Leona Lewis and her huge fanbase will mark Spirit’s fifteenth anniversary on 9th November. She was only twenty-two when her debut came out. That isa a remarkably young age to deal with such pressure, acclaim and responsibility! Already hugely promising at the start, her music has developed, and her confidence has grown through the years. Perhaps her best album is I Am. Even though there were some mixed reviews for her most recent album, there was a lot of praise and new affection for Lewis. I think that Spirit is an incredible album in many ways. I want to bring in a couple of reviews that, whilst pointing at some flaws, definitely praise Lewis as a performer and talent. This is what SLANT said in their 2008 review:
“Quick (and mostly useless) fact: Last week, Leona Lewis, winner of Simon Cowell’s U.K. talent show The X Factor, became the first British female artist to top the U.S. singles chart since 1987, when Kim Wilde transformed the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” into a dance-pop classic…and then quickly faded into obscurity. If all goes according to Cowell’s plan, however, Lewis’s career trajectory will be a little more like Mariah Carey’s. Not only does Lewis share with Carey a multiracial heritage, but she’s also got the voice—albeit, one with a slightly less impressive range and timbre.
The #1 hit in question is “Bleeding Love,” penned by teen heartthrob Jesse McCartney and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder; it’s the kind of pop song that announces itself from the very first note (in this case, a distorted organ), and though it’s an utterly by-the-numbers pop ballad, Lewis delivers vocally, and the track’s crunchy drum loop gives the illusion of edginess, something her debut, Spirit, desperately needs. The album alternates between similar heavy-beat ballads and more traditional adult contemporary mush; “Angel” falls into the former category (it’s yet another lazy copy from the “Irreplaceable” assembly line, and someone needs to buy Stargate a new drum machine for Christmas…2006), while “I Will Be,” a cover of an Avril Lavigne song produced by Dr. Luke and Max Martin (who takes a step even farther away from his “…Baby One More Time” past), is dangerously middle-of-the-road. Though the 21-year-old’s faithful, capable rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” proves that the timelessness of the song should remain unquestioned, the album’s adult-skewed material sounds even more jarring next to two fresh new tracks, the bouncy and youthful “Forgive Me” and urban club jam “Misses Glass,” added for American consumption. Drippy songs like “Footprints in the Sand,” which was co-written by Cowell himself and is based on the Christian allegorical text “Footprints,” might draw comparisons to Carey, but it’s the Carey of 15 years ago, not the one Lewis is currently trying to fend off at the top of the charts”.
A phenomenal commercial success in the U.S. in addition to her native U.K. (Lewis was born in Islington, London), huge songs like Bleeding Love makes Spirit enduring to this day. Even if you are not a fan of this type of music or have heard of Leona Lewis, I think you can play the album and find quite a few tracks that hit you. It is not perfect by any means, but it is an impressive debut from one of the U.K.’s most popular and important artists of the past fifteen/twenty years. This is what AllMusic said in their review:
“The truest test of Simon Cowell's power within the music industry circa 2008 was not whether American Idol could produce a star in its seventh season or if its U.K. cousin, The X Factor, would have another success in its fifth season -- it was whether he could turn Leona Lewis into the international superstar he so clearly believed she is. Lewis was the third winner of The X Factor -- the Cowell-driven replacement to Pop Idol in Britain, a replacement that came to be because he wanted to own a significant piece of the show -- and one of the key differences between Factor and Idol is that the judges can mentor the contestants and therefore have a stake in the outcome of the show, more than they do on Idol, where the judges merely comment.
Rightly impressed by Lewis' multi-octave voice -- reminiscent of a warmer, earthbound Mariah Carey -- Cowell continued his mentorship after the conclusion of the show, making her the first contestant in the whole Idol/Factor enterprise that he personally shepherded through the major-label process. He struck a deal with Clive Davis -- the executive producer behind all the American Idol projects, the producer who publicly bristled when Kelly Clarkson tried to take control of her career through her original compositions -- and the two launched a grand plan to break Lewis in her native U.K. first, then slowly roll her out in the U.S. a few months later, via an appearance on Oprah and a slightly re-sequenced and remixed version of her debut, Spirit.
That U.S. version drops the bonus track of Leona's version of "A Moment Like This," her first hit single that is not so coincidentally a cover of Kelly's first big single. If Kelly became a thorn in Davis' side, Leona Lewis seems happy, even eager, to play the major-label game, singing anything that comes her way, never lodging a complaint when she has to cut a couple R&B-flavored tracks to appeal to the American market. These tunes -- "Misses Glass" and "Forgive Me" -- are just slightly glitzier than the rest of Spirit, surely bearing heavier rhythms but not to the extent that the beats obscure Lewis' voice, as the whole point of Spirit is to showcase her singing, particularly those high glory notes that are all the rage on Idol/Factor.
Unlike most Idol/Factor alumni, Lewis can hit those big notes but make it seem easy, never straining her voice and building nicely to the climax. Unlike most divas, there is a human quality to her voice, as she's singing to the song, not singing to her voice. Then again, this was also true of Mariah Carey on her 1990 debut, which Spirit greatly resembles in how the handful of R&B-oriented songs camouflages how this is almost entirely a stuffy middle-of-the-road pop record. Not only that, but Spirit is so old-fashioned it sounds as if it could have been released in 1990 and compete with Carey's debut for the top of the charts; her first single, "Bleeding Love," opens with a crawling organ that recalls the muted gospel of "Vision of Love," even if the skin-crawling lyric "you cut me open and I keep bleeding love" wouldn't have suited the Top 40 in 1990.
I can appreciate how some people highlighted flaws on Spirit. Maybe lacking too much personality difference and development throughout the album, the emphasis is on the sheer power of Lewis’ voice, rather than range or diving too deep into her vocal gifts. That is a shame, as I think she could have produced a lot more if allowed to have more of a production and writing say. I feel Spirit has many highlights and should be commended because of its success and how it clearly resonated with millions of people. Turning fifteen on 9th November, people need to give this another spin. For someone like me – who really does not bond with winners of The X Factor and reality show winners’ albums -, I was not a big fan of Leona Lewis’ debut in 2007. I have grown to really appreciate it and the beginning of the professional career for a mighty talent. Spirit is appropriately named, as the album…
HAS that in abundance!