Leona Lewis

Leona Louise Lewis (yes, folks that's triple L) was born April 3rd 1985 and during much of her childhood Leona attended various art schools including Sylvia Young Theatre School, which is a elite theatre school in London. She also attended Italia Conti Academy and BRIT school. At the age of 6 she began to sing and aspired to be a famous singer when she grew up. At the age of 12 Leona wrote her first song, and at 15 recorded a few demo's, one of which, was Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You", which caught the ear and eye of American execs at Sony, who commented saying "Leona could hit the notes and I think she did it better than the original". After years of struggling in the music scene Leona ultimately gave up in music leaving a recorded Demo CD entitled "Twlight" to go unreleased.

Leona preforming at Wembley Arena in London on The X-Factor Tour

In 2006, Leona's boyfriend, Lou Al-Chamaa, encouraged Leona to audition for the third season of an American Idol type show in England called "The X Factor", which has been banned in America due to the similarities to American Idol, oddly enough the show is created by American Idol judge Simon Cowell. In Leona's audition she sung "Over The Rainbow" originally by Judy Garland, "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston, and "Without You" by Badfinger. Leona progressed round after round eventually making it to the December 16, 2006 finale.

Leona posing in a promotional shot for her debut single "A Moment Like This", a cover of Kelly Clarkson's song.

After winning the show, and being the first woman to do say and the only one since, Leona rush-released a cover version of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", in order to be able to chart for the coveted Christmas Number 1. The song was available for download immediately after Leona was announced as the winner and downloaded an estimated 50,000 times in the first half hour of it being publicly available. Selling an estimated 571,253 copies in it's first week, making it the fastest selling single by a female artist in the U.K., since 1999's "Baby One More Time", by Britney Spears. The single did become the second best selling single in the U.K., in only 2 weeks of it's release. To date the single has went on to sell 800,000+ copies in the UK alone.

Leona posing in a promotional shot for her smash album 'Spirit'

Leona spent much of 2007 touring with The X-Factor and recording her debut album. Simon Cowell who would serve as album producer stated on numerous occasions that Leona would spend her time on the album,‘‘The thing for me was to remember it was an opportunity to share my music with people and share it on a very wide scale”. Clive Davis of J Records also stepped up as Album Producer making her the first winner of The X-Factor to have an album deal on both sides of the Pond in the U.K. and U.S., Leona recorded the album in various locations around the world. "[They] reflect things that I'm really passionate about. I have to be able to put myself in the song for it to ring true to me. If it doesn't ring true to me, it's not going to be believable to anyone else." Leona said in reference to in her selection of song choices.

Leona as a Teenager, playing piano.

After 9 months of the general population waiting "Bleeding Love" hit the airwaves in the U.K. and hit a chord with the public, the song, released October 17 hit the number 1 spot, making Leona not only the first woman to win The X-Factor but the first X-Factor winner to have her first two singles debut at the top of the charts. The single has sold well over 6 Million copies world wide and has been certified both Gold and Platinum in the United States. Shortly after the single was released the album, Spirit, was and like the single hit the top of the charts, Over the period of the next couple of months the album, and single would be released in various countries through-out the world and has debuted at the Number One position in nine countries.

After the world wide success of her debut album Leona will continue to dish out singles from her debut album, and in the near future begin to record her second, In the U.K. Leona released a double A-Side single consisting of "Better in Time" and "Footprints in The Sand" which came in at Number 2 in the British charts, In the U.S. Leona plans to release her Akon penned track "Forgive Me", and is looking at a summer release.

Whatever we can expect out of Leona in the next couple is years is as good as a guess to you as it is to me, but it seems she's just the same shy girl who auditioned on The X-Factor nearly a year ago, I can assure you that her career will go through it's ups and downs, but regardless of what's going on in her personal life, it's really all about the music at the end of the day and as long as she's not singing about going into rehab i think it's safe to say the curly headed lass from a small town in London.