Leona Louise Lewis was born 3rd April 1985. She is an English celebrity. Leona is a singer and writer and winne of the 3rd series of the popular TV show “The X Factor”.

Her debut song, “A Moment like This”, was released in December 2006, breaking a world record after it was downloaded fifty thousand times within thirty minutes. Her second single “Bleeding Love” was the biggest selling single of 2007 in the United Kingdom. Her first album, Spirit, was released in November 2007, and became the fastest selling debut album ever in both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It is claimed Leona Lewis will be the first winner of a major television talent show in either the UK or U.S. to be given a major global launch with the release of their debut album.

Early life

Lewis was born in the London district of Islington to parents Aural Josiah, a Guyanese Afro-Caribbean youth worker, and Marie Lewis, a social worker of Anglo-Welsh descent. She is also of Italian and Irish descent on her mother’s side. She is the middle child of three, with two brothers, Kyle, who is younger, and Bradley, who is older. They grew up in Highbury and went to school at Ambler Primary School in Finsbury Park. Lewis always wanted to get into music and at the age of five her parents sent her to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, despite fearing it would cripple them financially. She also attended performing arts academy Italia Conti in Goswell Road, Islington and then the BRIT School where she was a classmate of Katie Melua. She also had small parts in TV shows and commercials, including as an extra in EastEnders.

Lewis wrote her first song at the age of twelve, and at the age of thirteen she won the Lady D under-eighteen talent show at the Hackney Empire. In 2004 she won the Yates’s Wannabe Talent Contest, singing Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby”.

After leaving school, Lewis took a number of jobs to pay to get into a recording studio. She worked in Pizza Hut as a waitress[6] and as a receptionist for Metropolitan Mortgages in Median Road, Lower Clapton, Hackney. She was also a receptionist for Head & Short Chiropodists in Stoke Newington High Street.

She recorded a number of songs including a demo album of her own songs called Twilight, but the album was never released. When she was fifteen years old she recorded a version of Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” with music producer Marley J. Wills, after which Lewis and Wills were invited to the US by Sony. Wills went on to say that “She was young and innocent but very much able. Even then she had a very good voice. We started putting tracks together straight away […] Leona could hit the notes and I think she did it better than the original.”

When her music career seemed to be going nowhere, she decided to give up, until her boyfriend persuaded her to enter The X Factor.

The X Factor

See also: The X Factor (UK series 3)

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. She was mentored by Simon Cowell.

Lewis’s voice was consistently highly praised by all three judges — Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne. Her abilities demonstrated a wide vocal range, with parts of certain performances reaching the whistle register.[citation needed] On occasions she was compared with divas such as Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Celine Dion. All three judges also commented on how the British music industry needed a singer like her, and that her performances were world class. Walsh remarked that her performance of “I Will Always Love You” was as good as Whitney Houston’s version. On the 28 October show (Big Band week), Lewis sang “Summertime”. Following her performance, Cowell said, “You are, absolutely, the best contestant I have ever had across any of these shows, and that was an amazing performance.”

Lewis was criticised, by both the judges and in the press, in relation to her confidence. Vocal coach Mark Hudson also criticised her lack of star quality. On the 9 December show, Cowell remarked that her rendition of Eva Cassidy’s “Over the Rainbow” (originally sung by Judy Garland) was the best he had ever witnessed. Cowell also commented throughout the show that Lewis’s lack of awareness as to how good she is, is what makes her special. 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, “This girl is probably fifty times better than any other contestant you have ever had, so you have a big responsibility to make the right record with her.” Before the final, on 11 December, Lewis performed at Hackney Empire for her friends, family and people from the local area. She went on to win the competition, receiving 60% of the 8,000,000+ votes cast. Cowell claims that he believed runner up Ray Quinn would win, until Lewis sung Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” and hit the final note, saying, “I think that final note may have just won you The X Factor”.

Post-X Factor career

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 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 571,253 copies,[27] beating Take That’s single “Patience”, and outselling the rest of the Top 40’s sales combined. It has been reported that one chain was “shifting more than 100 of her CDs a minute”.[28] 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.

In February 2007, Lewis signed a £5 million ($9.7 million) contract in the United States with Clive Davis, founder of Arista Records, who is responsible for the success of Whitney Houston. Lewis will now release five albums worldwide through Davis’s label, J Records. She celebrated her record deal by showcasing for several American music executives at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, where she sang “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”, “Summertime” and “Over the Rainbow”. One executive described her as “the lovechild of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey”.

A four-track download EP, “It’s All for You”, that she recorded before entering The X Factor went on sale online on 18 December 2006, however, the single did not chart.

On 16 January 2007, Lewis’s single “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 prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Best Selling British Single.[34] On 15 March 2007, Lewis performed in front of Charles, Prince of Wales at the UK finals of The Prince’s Trust RBS Celebrate Success awards at the Barbican Centre in London, which were hosted by June Sarpong.[35] She presented the award for “Young Achiever of the Year” and also performed “Over the Rainbow”.

On 2 June 2007, Lewis performed at a special This Is Your Life for Simon Cowell, singing “Somewhere”, from West Side Story, with Il Divo.

Lewis appeared in the October 2007 issue Harper’s Bazaar UK, modelling dresses from Roberto Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana, Emanuel Ungaro and Vivienne Westwood. The photo shoot took place in Los Angeles and it was reported that severe disruption was caused when a crowd of fans blocked the streets trying to see Lewis.

2007–present: Spirit

On 25 April 2007, a press release was sent out revealing that Simon Cowell and Clive Davis would work together in a first-of-its-kind partnership on both the song and producer selection for Lewis’s debut album, entitled Spirit.[4][41] On 24 September 2007, Lewis performed a special album launch party at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge, London, where she performed four tracks from the album.[42][43][44][45] The album was released in the Republic of Ireland on 9 November 2007, where it entered the Irish Albums Chart at number one, being Ireland’s fastest selling debut album of all time. It was released on 12 November 2007 in the United Kingdom, where it entered the UK Albums Chart at number one, and was also the UK’s fastest selling debut album, and the fourth fastest selling album of all time.[3] The album was released internationally in January 2008, and went to number one in New Zealand, Australia, Austria Germany and Switzerland.[46] Spirit will be released in the United States on 18 March 2008.

Lewis wrote and recorded tracks for the album in London, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City and Atlanta, Georgia. She worked with several songwriters and record producers including Dallas Austin, Max Martin, Stargate,[52] Walter Afanasieff, Salaam Remi, Kara DioGuardi and Novel.[54] She also recorded a track with Ne-Yo.

Lewis’s second single, “Bleeding Love”, produced by Ryan Tedder and written by Tedder and Jesse McCartney, was released on 22 October 2007 in the UK.[57] Lewis performed the song on the first live show of the fourth series of The X Factor on 20 October.[58][59] The single sold 66,000 copies on its first day of release and went on to sell 218,805 copies in its first week, giving it the biggest first-week sales of 2007 to date.[61][62] It entered both the UK and Irish Singles Charts at number one. It stayed at the top of the UK chart for seven weeks and the Irish chart for eight.[65] It has also been number one in the singles charts of New Zeal On 21 February 2008, Lewis became the second UK reality show contestant to break the major American charts as “Bleeding Love” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 85.[67] The first was Joss Stone.

On 31 October 2007, Lewis appeared on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge, with acoustic performances of “Bleeding Love” and a cover of Snow Patrol’s 2003 single “Run”.[68][69] Her version of “Run” was popular with listeners, and as a result, was added to Radio 1’s A list (a list of songs receiving the most airplay).

On 3 November 2007, Lewis appeared alongside Céline Dion, Jennifer Lopez and other female vocalists, on an ITV singing special called Saturday Night Divas. On 6 November she won ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at the Cosmopolitan Ultimate Woman of the Year Awards and on 7 November, she turned on the world famous Oxford Street Christmas lights. On 16 November 2007, Lewis performed “Bleeding Love” live on Children in Need.

It was reported on 31 October 2007 that management company UEG Music planned to release an album of ten songs recorded by Lewis before her time on The X Factor, shortly after the release of Spirit, called Best Kept Secret. This is because the management company claimed they wanted to recoup some of the costs incurred in their investment and training of Lewis, including £70,000 of studio costs that they claimed remained unpaid. They also claimed to have offered Sony and Lewis’s father to buy the rights of the album but both refused. Cowell was reportedly angered by the release of the album, saying that the company did not have the rights to release the songs, and that he would attempt to block the album from being released. He also claimed that the songs are unfinished demos, that fans should boycott the album and that there is no agreement with Lewis to release it. A representative for Lewis said: “UEG approached Leona and her representatives earlier this year - but they do not have the rights to release these demos.” Despite Cowell’s attempts, the album was briefly released two weeks after her debut album Spirit, on 26 November 2007, through online music store Juno Records, though all trace of the album was removed from Juno the same day.v

In the 30 November 2007 edition of American magazine Entertainment Weekly, Lewis was included among “8 to Watch in ‘08″ in their 2007 “Entertainer of the Year” issue. The list of entertainers expected to become household names in the coming year describes Lewis as “the next Mariah Carey”.

On 14 January 2008, Lewis was nominated for four BRIT Awards, in the categories British Female Solo Artist, British Breakthrough Act, British Album for Spirit, and British Single for “Bleeding Love”.[84] She performed at the awards ceremony on 20 February 2008.[85] Despite being the favourite to win the most awards, she received none. Lewis’s management team were reportedly furious, saying “Leona and everyone involved are upset. The Brits love a snub but this is so cruel on her. Her record sales dragged the industry off its arse last year.”

On 9 February 2008, Lewis performed at Clive Davis’s annual pre-Grammy party, as Davis’s ‘Special New Artist’ guest. It has been reported that Lewis has agreed to appear in the seventh series of American Idol in 2008 to help boost her career in the United States.

Lewis’s third single, a double A-side featuring “Better in Time” and “Footprints in the Sand”, will be released in the United Kingdom in March 2008, in aid of Sport Relief,[93][94] and she will visit Africa for the charity.

It has been reported that Lewis is planning a £15 million world tour in 2010. A second album is planned for release in 2009.

Personal life

Lewis now lives in Hackney and has been with her boyfriend Lou Al-Chamaa, an electrician, since she was seventeen. Lewis and Al-Chamaa have known each other since Lewis was nine years old and they grew up on the same street. They are reported to have exchanged commitment rings and rented a £120,000 flat together in North London. Lewis has stated that she would like to to marry Al-Chamaa.

Although her big passion is singing, Lewis is also a keen dancer and actress, and can play the piano and guitar. She also has a pet Rottweiler named Rome.

Lewis has been a vegetarian since she was 12, saying that she became ill when she stopped eating meat because she did not know what else to eat. She says in the future she would like to promote a line of non-leather bags and shoes that are affordable.

There was really no sense to write it again so the source is of course Wikipedia! :)