Leona Lewis

Leona Lewis (2014)

Leona Louise Lewis (born April 3, 1985 in Islington , London ) is a British singer , songwriter and animal rights activist . She won the third season of the UK singing talent show The X Factor in December 2006 . A year later she achieved international number one hits with both the song Bleeding Love and her debut album Spirit . So far, she has released five albums in her career.

Life

Leona Lewis was born on April 3, 1985, the second of three children to Joe and Maria Lewis and grew up in Hackney , north London. Her father is from the Caribbean and her mother from Wales . Leona Lewis wrote her first song at the age of twelve, and at the age of 13 she won the Lady D competition at the Hackney Empire. She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School and the London School for Performing Arts & Technology . Even before participating in The X Factor , she recorded a first album called Twilight , which has never been released to this day. In 2019 she married the German dancer Dennis Jauch.

Career

2006: The X Factor

Leona Lewis at the London premiere of the animated comedy Flushed Away in November 2006

In the summer of 2006, Lewis attended an audition for the third season of the talent show The X Factor . With the help of her mentor Simon Cowell , she made it into the final show on December 16, 2006. There she prevailed against her competitor Raymond Quinn and received a record deal worth one million British pounds with Sony BMG . Of the more than eight million votes cast, 60 percent went to Leona Lewis. Four days after the finale, her debut single, A Moment Like This , was released in the UK , a cover version of the 2002 hit by Kelly Clarkson . The single had reached a million pre-orders before the final show aired, making it a Christmas number one -Hit .

2007–2008: Spirit and worldwide success

During 2007 Leona Lewis recorded songs for her debut album in New York and Los Angeles, among others . This also resulted in the later hit Bleeding Love , written by Jesse McCartney and Ryan Tedder , the singer of OneRepublic . In the UK, the song was released on October 19, 2007 as a second single. In its first week of sales, it sold over 218,000 times in the UK. This makes the song one of the most successful “first week” of a single in 2007. It reached number one on the UK singles charts and stayed there for seven weeks. On December 16, 2007, the single was awarded Record of the Year 2007 in a British public vote .

Because of these successes, interest in Lewis abroad was aroused, which in early December 2007 announced the first Europe-wide release plans. In the US magazine Entertainment Weekly , Leona Lewis was named "next Mariah Carey " and "one of the most interesting new artists of 2008" in the New Years preview 8 to Watch in '08 .

On January 11th, 2008 Bleeding Love was released in Germany , Austria and Switzerland . It went straight to number one in the German and Austrian singles charts on January 25, 2008, and also number three in Switzerland. The single was released in Denmark , Sweden , Norway, as well as Spain , Italy and France . In the United States, the single was released at the same time as the album Spirit in March 2008. Bleeding Love also made it to the top of the charts in the United States. A new video for the song was also recorded for the USA. The album Spirit was released on January 25, 2008 in German-speaking countries and reached number one in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

On August 24, 2008, Lewis performed at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing with Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and interpreted a version of their rock classic Whole Lotta Love . Lewis' second album was released in the UK on November 26, 2008. These are songs recorded prior to participating in The X Factor . The rights to the songs from this album, called Best Kept Secret , were not acquired by Sony BMG or Lewis' father and were legally free. As a result, the album was released by the management agency UEG Music only through the online music retailer Juno Records , although Sony BMG tried to prevent this release. In the same month, a deluxe edition of their debut album was released. On November 3, 2008, the single Forgive Me was released from it.

2009–2011: biography and echo

In July 2009, Leona Lewis launched a perfume named after her. Due to her commitment to animal welfare, she chose the German company LR Health & Beauty Systems , which does not carry out any animal testing for the manufacture of its products and has its own children's aid organization, LR GLOBAL KIDS FUND e. V. , had launched. A portion of the proceeds from their perfume goes to disadvantaged children.

Lewis sang the song I See You for the movie Avatar - Aufbruch nach Pandora . In addition, My Hands was selected as the theme song for the video game Final Fantasy XIII .

In October 2009, Lewis' biography Dreams was published by the London publisher Hodder & Stoughton. Lewis' second studio album Echo was released on November 13, 2009 in Germany and on November 16, 2009 in the United Kingdom . The first single, Happy , reached number two in the British and Austrian charts , number three in the German charts and number four on the Swiss charts . Like its predecessor, the album reached the top of the British album charts . Ryan Tedder and Justin Timberlake worked on the album . The second official single I Got You from the album Echo was released in mid-March 2010.

At the initiative of Simon Cowell , Lewis, along with other artists such as Kylie Minogue , Take That and Elton John, re-recorded the title Everybody Hurts by REM as a benefit single for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti . The single reached number one on the UK charts.

The first single Collide from Lewis' third studio album Glassheart was released on September 2, 2011, more than a year before the album was released. Lewis first sang the song live on the UK game show "Red or Black?" Collide was nominated for a Grammy in the 2012 Best Remix category but did not win the award. On October 7, 2011 it was announced that Lewis is now under contract with RCA Records .

2012–2014: Glassheart and Christmas, with Love

Leona Lewis ( Life Ball 2014)

Lewis' third studio album, Glassheart , was released on October 12, 2012. In Great Britain it reached number three on the album charts. The second release from the album was the single Trouble in October 2012 . It reached number seven in the UK singles charts. The third single from the album was Lovebird in November 2012 . The album was released in Germany on January 18, 2013 and reached number six in the German charts.

At the beginning of December 2012 it was announced that a European tour with Lewis is planned for 2013. In April 2013 she also gave concerts in Germany for the first time.

Christmas, with Love is Leona Lewis' first Christmas album, which was released on November 29, 2013. The first single is One More Sleep and was released on November 5, 2013.

In 2014 she starred in the movie Walking on Sunshine and also worked on the soundtrack.

2015-present: I Am

Her fifth studio album I Am was released on September 11, 2015 and contains 10 songs. The single releases, as well as the album itself, could not build on the success of the earlier releases.

On February 9, 2018, Leona released a duet version of his hit “You are the reason” with Calum Scott .

social commitment

Lewis is a vegetarian and appears publicly as an animal rights activist . She refuses to wear leather and fur products and fights against the abuse of animals. Together with the WSPA World Animal Welfare Society , she campaigns for a global animal welfare declaration that calls for international recognition of animal welfare by the United Nations . She also supports the marine conservation organization Sea Shepherd financially. The animal welfare association PETA named her “Person of the Year 2008” for her commitment .

Discography

→ Main article : Leona Lewis / discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
2007	Spirit	DE1 × 3 Triple gold (87 weeks)DE	AT1 platinum (60 weeks)AT	CH1 × 2 Double platinum (74 weeks)CH	UK1 × 10 Tenfold platinum (103 weeks)UK	US1 platinum (61 weeks)US	First published: November 9, 2007 Sales: + 10,000,000
2009	echo	DE12 (15 weeks) DE	AT8th gold (13 weeks)AT	CH3 gold (21 weeks)CH	UK1 × 2 Double platinum (25 weeks)UK	US13 (4 weeks) US	First published: November 9th, 2009 Sales: + 1,040,000
2012	Glassheart	DE6 (4 weeks) DE	AT5 (4 weeks) AT	CH29 (11 weeks) CH	UK3 silver (8 weeks)UK	-	First published: October 12, 2012 Sales: + 60,000
2013	Christmas, with love	-	-	CH42 (4 weeks) CH	UK13 gold (4 weeks)UK	US113 (1 week) US	First published: November 29, 2013 Sales: + 122,000
2015	I am	DE33 (1 week) DE	AT34 (1 week) AT	CH23 (5 weeks) CH	UK12 (3 weeks) UK	US38 (1 week) US	First published: September 11, 2015

Web links

Commons : Leona Lewis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (English)
• Leona Lewis at Discogs (English)
• Leona Lewis in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leona Lewis and Dennis Jauch: First photos of the wedding celebration vip.de on August 5, 2019
2. ↑ release date
3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Die Schöne und der Masculine , Münsterländische Volkszeitung from July 4, 2009 ( Memento from September 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Press release of April 3, 2009
6. ↑ Leona Lewis: "Dreams" published
7. ↑ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1246033/Kylie-Minogue-revealed-latest-star-Simon-Cowells-Haiti-earthquake-charity-single.html
8. ↑ http://www.leonalewismusic.com/gb/news/detail/blog_from_leona/
9. ↑ http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a432450/leona-lewis-announces-new-single-fireflies-its-really-powerful.html
10. ↑ http://www.looks-der-stars.de/artikel/leona-lewis-at finishing-performance-bei-konzert-in-berlin_a2595/ 1
11. ↑ [1]
12. ↑ WSPA - News --- Leona Lewis: Animals are important to me! ( Memento of the original from November 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Whale Wars' Sea Shepherd Nets Anthony Kiedis and Rick Rubin's Support | Hollywood Today. June 17, 2009, accessed May 26, 2020 . 
14. ↑ Leona Lewis Wins PETA'S 'Person Of The Year' Award | Media Center. In: PETA UK. Retrieved June 23, 2020 (American English). 
15. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
16. ↑ lewis corner: Leona Album. 1 sales number. In: digitalspy.co.uk. October 10, 2014, accessed October 19, 2014 . 
17. ^ Rob Copsey: The Official Top 20 biggest Christmas albums of the century. In: Official Charts Company. December 14, 2018, accessed January 6, 2019 .