Leona Lewis

Leona Louise Lewis was born in London, April 3, 1985, to the family of Afro-British descent. She was fond of music since the early childhood years, and her parents did not spare significant sums to pay for her studying at the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School. The girl mastered choreography, stage acting and singing there. At 12, Leona wrote her first song and soon won her first talent competition for artists under 18. This victory gave her the final confidence in her artistic future as she chose the way to the music stage. She perfected her skills at the BRIT School before receiving an offer from the USA producers. She started with doing covers of celebrated songs and impressed the managers of Sony as a singer with perfect voice and ear for music. Aged 19, she won Yates's Wannabe Talent Contest with the song Always Be My Baby. She captivated the jury and the spectators with brilliant singer’s talent, artistry and personal magnetism. Still, triumphs at such events did not find her good contracts. Leona had to record the demo of her own material to show what she really was.

Lewis worked hard in different areas to collect the money she needed to make her first record. Finally, she prepared her first demo, Twilight, composed of her own songs, featuring her respectable author’s abilities. However, the album had poor promotion and failed to draw much attention. It was an end of Leona’s hopes and cause of her long deep depression. Nevertheless, Lewis pulled herself together and took one last chance. She participated in The X Factor show. Her overwhelming performance left no doubt of who deserved the first place. The experts were stunned by the widest range of her voice and naturalness of her attitude on the stage. This show was extremely popular among the United Kingdom population, which made Leona’s first yet-unreleased single, A Moment Like This, incredibly anticipated. It was downloaded by over 50,000 users within 30 minutes, breaking the world record.

As The X Factor triumphant, Leona Lewis received a contract with a music recording company. Her debut studio album, Spirit, became a massive international project involving 70 people as musicians, authors and choristers. It was recorded in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Stockholm and London. Leona did her best to participate in most parts of this large creative process. Spirit met all the highest expectation of both, the makers and the listeners of the album. It became platinum five times in the UK alone was sold in two million elsewhere in the world. It became the fastest selling album in the UK and Ireland and the first debut album to top the US Billboard 200. In 2008, Leona Lewis was nominated for four Grammy Awards, but unexpectedly, won none. The same year, the compilation Best Kept Secret was released, featuring her old songs written before The X Factor period. In August 2008, Leona Lewis performed Whole Lotta Love along with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. In 2009 Leona’s second studio album Echo was released.