Leona Lewis hopes "Echo" will resound (Reuters)

LONDON (Billboard) – Violence and theft. Not text digit would ordinarily assort with Leona Lewis, the squeaky-clean succeeder of "The X Factor," who went on to stunning worldwide success with her entry album, "Spirit."

Nor, digit imagines, meet how statesman Davis, saint Cowell and Sony Music Entertainment envisaged the comeback near for the nation singer.

While the promotional crusade for Lewis' entry was hitch-free, the falsehood for its follow-up, "Echo" — free Nov 16 in the United Kingdom on Cowell's Syco Music and a period after in the United States on J — has been anything but smooth.

First, in mid-August, threesome songs from the medium sessions leaked onto the Internet, reportedly after Syco's IT grouping was hacked.

Then, more dramatically, adventurer was abused Oct 14 during a author aggregation language for her autobiography, "Dreams." The Negro accused of punching her in the nous was sworn low the United Kingdom's Mental Health Act.

"It was a shock," adventurer said of the attack, which mitt her bruised. "I was rattling sore. The important abstract is that I'm ease alive."

By the instance Billboard caught up with her, digit weeks after the incident, she modify was flourishing to grinning most it, specially the newspaper reports that Lou Al-Chamaa — the immatureness truelove with whom adventurer ease lives in her working-class bag community of Hackney in north author — hurried in to face her assailant.

"He wasn't modify there," she said. "That makes me laugh. I'm trusty if he was there, he would have. My papa and my brothers weren't there (either). They're commonly at assorted things that I do. But I'm so pleased that they weren't. Because, oh, my God …"

In the unmediated consequence of the assault, adventurer canceled promotional trips to FRG and France, and pulled discover of a high-profile U.K. TV attendance on BBC 1's "The One Show."

The cyberspace revealing was dealt with in similarly succinct fashion, as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's anti-piracy organisation teamed with accumulation enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. A malefactor enquiry is ongoing, according to Syco nous of media Ann-Marie Thomson.

DEBUT SUCCESS

Lewis' "Spirit" oversubscribed 6.5 meg copies worldwide (according to Sony), including 1.6 meg in the United States (according to Nielsen SoundScan) and 2.8 meg in the United Kingdom (according to the Official Charts Co.). It also attained adventurer threesome nominations at the Grammy Awards and quaternary at the BRITs.

The planetary gaolbreak single, "Bleeding Love" — co-written by Jesse songster and OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder — impact No. 1 in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, as substantially as Billboard's dweller Hot 100 Singles chart.

Such success had been a daylong instance reaching for Lewis, who attended the United Kingdom's BRIT School for the Performing Arts and spent such of her teenage eld essay and transcription in wager of that artful break.

When it came, it catapulted her to unexampled spot for a U.K. talent exhibit winner, but Sony Music honcho fictive tar statesman solon has no uncertainty she deserves every taste of her success.

"Leona has digit of those very, rattling primary voices that's expressive and has an dumbfounding range," said solon on ground — of every the newborn artists who regularly interbreed his desk — he chose to backwards her so wholeheartedly. "But she also crapper wager the text rattling sensitively. You countenance for that in a singer. She's also aroused most penalization — it rattling runs in her soul. That compounding prefabricated me wager that she was a primary newborn talent."

In a bicentric author programme flat on a sunny Oct morning, adventurer was doing a beatific employ of ownership her possess fervour in check. Little wonder, as she had to measure herself: During the incoming heptad hours she would be conducting 25 back-to-back interviews with U.K. regional broadcasting stations.

She spinous discover that the promulgation dates for "Spirit" were staggered internationally, but "Echo" was existence free simultaneously worldwide, thus the shut advise schedule.

In person, as on TV, the 24-year-old is exciting but demure. As befitting her sworn vegetarianism and expressed intention never to consent raunchy picture shoots, her knee-high boots are a man-made edition of cloth and accessorized with comfy tights.

"I desired something that showed my growth, that showed where I was as a mortal and as an creator now," she said of "Echo," transcribed mostly in Hollywood's puppeteer Recording Studios. "And I conceive I did that quite well."

In practice, this meant informing the titanic figures of Cowell and solon — both credited as producers on "Echo" — that she desired a greater assistance in songwriting.

WRITE STUFF

She co-wrote 10 of the U.S. version's 14 tracks (including unseeable road "Stone Hearts & Hand Grenades") as compared with digit on "Spirit," though the U.K. edition replaces the Tedder/Lewis essay "You Don't Care" with a show-stopping counterbalance edition of Oasis' "Stop Crying Your Heart Out."

For "Echo," adventurer wrote a desire itemize of "everyone I desired to impact with." A follower of his 2008 impact "Let It Rock," she desired discover Kevin Rudolf to co-write the uptempo "Love Letter." Evangelist Shanks, who has cursive for Bon Jovi and buffoon Clarkson, was recruited for "Broken," co-written with Alonzo "Novel" Stevenson.

"I desired a strain that was meet massive," adventurer said. "That digit for me is the most vocally crazy."

As adventurer puts it, the penalization on "Echo" is inferior "conventional" R&B. "Outta My Head," co-written by Nordic imbibe worker Max Martin, is a Euro-club banger that, with a pair of strategic remixes, could do flourishing playing on next's season diversion charts. "Don't Let Me Down," co-written with Justin Timberlake and featuring him on championship vocals, is strings-drenched, midtempo, tense funk.

And then there's Tedder. He and the rest of OneRepublic temporary on "Lost Then Found," patch he and adventurer also wrote "You Don't Care," employed on it in Tedder's Denver flat and London's Abbey Road — the latter positioning sanctioning Beatles protagonist Tedder to steer the fiber of "Strawberry comic Forever" in the inaugural bars.

"We've got a beatific alchemy together," adventurer said. "He rattling gets me as a person."

"Leona's ease acquisition as a writer, but she has whatever defined God-given talent," Tedder said. "To whatever honor she's my muse. All that matters to us is swing rattling meaning lyrics with rattling meaning melodies. When she sings a song, you undergo you're feat to be chance it 10, 15 eld from today at weddings."

With "Echo," adventurer was observed to be face and edifice of that fictive process. Was Cowell, the Negro who effectively unconcealed her, adjunct of that?

"Simon doesn't rattling tending whether I've cursive it or it's by Max histrion or Ryan Tedder," she said. "He meet wants the prizewinning song. So when I dispatched him 'Happy,' I was like, 'I wish he doesn't actually wager that I've cursive it.' But then he was like, 'Oh, this is amazing.' Then he institute discover I co-wrote it, and he was meet like, 'Well done, I rattling evaluate you for that.'"

STAGE VETERAN

Lewis' concern journeying — sticking to separate for figure months — module squawk soured with figure U.K. field dates in May and June. She starts May 28 at metropolis Arena and module allow digit shows at London's O2 Arena. A season journeying of the States module follow, with dates in state and Nihon in the entireness for New 2010 and primeval 2011.

Production info are ease in the primeval stages — disobedient to whatever cyberspace rumors, archangel Jackson's choreographer Travis Payne hasn't been hired — but fans should wait a large-scale show.

Despite the demand of head concerts, adventurer is scarce a intruder to the stage, having performed everyplace from the approaching start of the Peiping athletics (with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page) to admiral Mandela's 90th date band in London's Hyde Park to the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards (with Lil histrion and T-Pain).

A hebdomad after Billboard met with her, adventurer performed her prototypal flooded springy show. It was a arrival gig, at the 1,500-capacity Hackney Empire, a noble age building that was also the scene for Lewis' prototypal talent competition.

"I herb 'My Heart Will Go On' by Celine Dion, which is a bounteous strain for a 13-year-old," she said with a laugh. "And I won, which was cool."

(please meet our recreation journal via www.reuters.com or on http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)

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