How do you solve a problem like Leona?
Well, if you’re Syco you make her release a hastily cobbled together covers EP. This weekend it was announced that I Got You hitmaker and all round global singing sensation Leona Lewis will release a new EP next Sunday, the same day she performs on the fourteen hour long X Factor final. This should have been the pinnacle of a great second half of 2011 for Leona, her third album riding high in the charts off the back of a moody yet amazing goth-pop tinged ballad. Instead, the third album is now due out in either March or May 2012 and the second single - that a few people had heard and loved - is now on hold. One imagines that a lot of the material due to be on this third album, Glassheart, has now been put on hold, specifically the stuff that saw her trying to expand on her sound, i.e. anything faster than 120 bpm. Following the relative failure of Collide and the whole Aviici-gave-me-the-song-oh-actually-he-didn’t court case debacle, Syco have obviously panicked and gone back down the make-the-song-your-own route. Of course Leona’s pretty good at that, but is that enough in 2011/2012? Should a woman whose first single was Bleeding Love still be churning out covers? In fact, should a woman whose first single was number 1 in nearly every country on the planet and whose debut album has sold close to 10 millions copies be shuffling around a horse sanctuary in Essex on a bill that also features Stavros Flatley? Should someone who was once referred to as the next Whitney Houston perhaps be a bit more selective with the things she gets up to? As much as we all love Natasha Begingfield, duetting with her and that bloke off Glee to help save some horses is just not the best look for someone who wants to be a megastar. Mind you, perhaps that’s not on her agenda. We’d have a better idea if she were perhaps able to express some of her thoughts and opinions in a way that isn’t “it’s amazing” or “I’m so happy to be here”. Leona just isn’t an interesting popstar, which means that the music she makes has to be so much bigger than she is. Bleeding Love is one of the best singles of the last twenty years and she has so much to do with it being that amazing, it’s just that when the songs sneak below ‘very good’ there’s not enough there to lift it.
Anyway, the covers. It’s clever and cynical from Syco. By giving contestants on The X Factor Run to sing in whichever year it was, we were primed for her cover which then propelled Spirit back to the number 1 slot across Europe (America had kind of given up by this point). Then before Echo came out I suddenly noticed a lot of contestants singing Oasis’ Stop Crying Your Heart Out and lo and behold there she is covering it on the show (the ploy was less successful to be honest). Now, in 2011, it feels that the sudden success of Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris (which has already been propelled back into the charts thanks to numerous contestants warbling all over it) has moved Syco to think “right Leona, that whole Collide shit didn’t work so you can cover this song on the night, we’ll swamp you in dry ice, show a montage of the contestants’ journeys and job’s a good ‘un”. Fine for the ratings and it will no doubt sound lovely, but where does it leave Leona? It leaves Leona tethered to a show that she should have left behind by now. Three albums in and she’s still their own version of Susan Boyle and that’s not helping anyone to be honest.
