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| Spirit | 
 enlarge | Artist: Leona Lewis
Label: J-Records
Category: Music
List Price: $18.97
Buy New: $6.39
You Save: $12.58 (66%)
New (43) Used (18) from $6.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  164 reviews
Sales Rank: 32
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 702554
UPC: 886970255424
EAN: 8869702554240
ASIN: B0012TBGYC
Release Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW - Sealed IMPORT!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Leona has arrived April 8, 2008
25 out of 29 found this review helpful
Leona Lewis has arrived, her cd Spirit has made it to the US for all to hear. She has a voice ,between Mariah and Toni Braxton all in one. What a gem to own. Tracks: Bleeding Love, Better In time, I Will Be, I'm You, Forgive Me, Misses Glass, Angel, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Yesterday, Whatever It Takes, Take A Bow, UK bonus : Footprints In The Sand and Here I am .
Im dedicating the songs Bleeding Love, I Will Be to my husband, To my special friend for life the songs Better In Time, Yesterday. To my lord and savior above Footprints In the Sand for guiding me through the good and bad times, thank you for always being there for me. Thanks Leona for the magic and sincere faith in your music. You are a star already for the world.
 More Corporate Music - bleah April 17, 2008
23 out of 34 found this review helpful
Of course Clive and Cowell are championing her - they paid for her, they signed her, they brought in anyone who has sold anything lately to dream up hooks and sounds and pumped up the drum machines. More whining and emoting and warbling and there is nothing new here. Jewel has a better voice and Avril rocks harder and both of them have more sincere, serious or fun lyrics.
This music is homogenized and streamlined for mass appeal. She'll be a model full time before too long selling perfume, and good for her for the success (seriously - she's working the system). But people you are being manipulated by mega corporations and this is their product and their vision (not hers) for mass appeal music that will sell the most.
No Simon it's not hard to crack the US Charts when you have the entire industry from print to news and television and all the top dogs and entertainment outlets promoting and playing the music over and over and over again. It's a formula my young friends and there are a lot more original artists out there that deserve your hard earned dollars. It's a profit driven industry and big corporate media giants have decided this is the safest way to spend their investment dollars. Explore the unknowns and take a pass on whatever the coordinated media conglomerates are pushing on you.
It's all an effort to extract the most amount of money out of the most amount of people and for one product. It has nothing to do with honesty, originality or well played or well written lyrics, songs and music. It has nothing to do with art and artists and everything to do with mass media conglomeration, advertising, and hype.
Find a local college radio station to hear the real music before big business takes over all the airways - or hit the search button on your satellite radio and explore everything. Make it your own not what someone else tells you is cool. If the music speaks to you and is honest, not gimmicky or aimed at the lowest common denominator go for it enjoy it and see them live in a small club. That's the real grass roots music scene. Always has been always will be. Think for yourself. This is just all marketing based on product testing and past unit sales generated by coordinated hype in an effort to separate you from your money as quickly as possible. There's no integrity here the sounds from this disc are about money.
Good, but "over-balladed" May 8, 2008
23 out of 61 found this review helpful
This is a strong debut album from X-Factor winner Leona Lewis, the only potential problems being a surfeit of ballads, and a large dose of overexposure. The British born singer/songwriter is of Guyanese/Welsh parentage, and was no stranger to performing before catching the eye of Simon Cowell, who moved heaven, earth and Clive Davis to ensure that this album had all the backing it needed.
Even before the album was released, she already had a hit single with her version of the Kelly Clarkson song "A Moment Like This", which can be found as a bonus on the UK version of the album. Please note that the track listing for the UK Version is different to the US and Canadian releases. The songs "Forgive Me" (produced by Akon) and "Misses Glass" on this version take the place of "Homeless" (a slow R&B ballad) and "The Best You Never Had" (a slightly faster ballad).
Songs of interest are "Bleeding Love", the first single from the album; "Better in Time", the second single (pop/R&B) which reminds me of Alicia Keys "No One"; "I Will Be", a cover of the Avril Lavigne song; "Yesterday", a pop/R&B track where she sounds like Mariah Carey; "Take A Bow", a radio-friendly R&B track; and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", a cover of the Roberta Flack hit written by Ewan MacColl. Lewis also co-wrote the songs "Whatever It Takes", a mid-tempo R&B track, and "Here I Am", a pop ballad.
Special mention should be made of the powerful and emotional ballad "Footprints in the Sand" inspired by the famous poem by Mary Stevenson, which ends:
The Lord replied
"The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
Is when I carried you."
Undoubtedly talented, strikingly photogenic, and with a lovely voice, it seems a bit early for all the comparisons to Mariah Carey and early Whitney Houston, but I do believe that we'll be hearing a lot more from Leona Lewis.
Amanda Richards, May 8, 2008
She's off to a great start April 18, 2008
21 out of 82 found this review helpful
I'm really happy to see that this CD has finally been released in the US. This is an exciting time for Leona Lewis. She hit the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 recently - the first UK female artiste to do it in over 20 years and only the fourth to do it ever. She relinquished the spot to Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" last week but to my surprise, I just heard on the news - BBC News 24, no less - that she's taken it back and that this album is #1 on the Billboard Top 200 as well, making her the first UK artiste to debut at the top US album spot ever! I expected her to do well in the US with this product but I honestly never dreamed she'd do THIS well!
I originally reviewed the album back in December last year, when it was released on Amazon on (no longer available) UK import. I definitely feel the review merits a repost here. This is the original (slightly edited) review as it appeared in December 2007:
"The 2006 "X Factor" winner's debut album is barely out of the blocks and it's already a record breaker. ("X Factor" is the UK version of "American Idol"). It sold over 375,000 copies in its first week, beating the record previously set by the Arctic Monkeys by about 12,000. That might not sound much in an American context but in this country, that's huge potatoes. You go, honey.
Her follow-up single "Bleeding Heart" has also now stood at the top of the UK singles charts for an impressive five weeks. The lead single, a cover of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This" was released last year when she won "X Factor" and that was at the top of the charts for what seemed like ages as well. Simon Cowell and Clive Davis definitely seem to know what they're doing.
Judging by the number of absolute belters on offer here, she's clearly got her eyes on Mariah's fan base (I would've said Mariah and Whitney but I guess we all know why I didn't) and I say good luck to her. I don't usually go for albums put out by talent show winners ("American Idol" 'loser' Chris Daughtry's was the first I ever bought and this is only my second) but I've always thought Leona was a special talent right from the first moment I saw her on the show. Every performance she gave was diamond, in my opinion. Vocally, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston are in a class of their own but it's not totally ridiculous to compare Leona to them, as she demonstrated when she performed some of their hits on the show.
Thankfully, the album isn't the usual collection of dreadful covers. The Clarkson song is (of course) on this UK version of the album but isn't likely to appear on the US version when it finally gets released. Only one other sneaks in and while I would've loved it to be "Summertime" - the version she delivered on "X Factor" still gives me shivers anytime I watch it on YouTube - she's gone for the Roberta Flack classic "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and to give her the credit she's due, she owns the song. Treading the line carefully between r&b and pop, the album is a bit samey in places but if breathless diva is your thing, this one is definitely for you.
There are only four real stand out numbers here (with "Take A Bow" likely to be the track labelled 'best on album') but with people like Walter Afanasieff Dallas Austin, Jam & Lewis, Soulshock & Carlin, Salaam Remi and Ne-Yo involved, Spirit is going to be huge, especially in that lucrative yet elusive American market the album is so obviously aimed at. The sooner it gets a proper (and reasonably priced) release there, the better. Leona is young, she's pretty and she oozes a natural sweetness and charm. As Simon Cowell might say, "I think people will like her."
But most importantly, she has a voice to kill for. As long as she doesn't end up becoming another self-important diva and as long as she eventually ditches the ueber producers and gets to be herself, this is one lady who is going to go far. She's definitely one to look out for; definitely one worth checking out."
 Way, Way, Way Overrated April 24, 2008
21 out of 38 found this review helpful
My exposure to Leona Lewis so far has been limited to listening to song samples of this album and seeing her live performance on the April 23rd American Idol results show. After being praised to the skies by Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell, Leona sang "Bleeding Love," which was at best mediocre and at worst boring. Shortly thereafter, AI contestants Carly Smithson and Syesha Mercado sang their songs from the previous night. Needless to say, there was no comparison. Both Smithson and Mercado blew Leona Lewis out of the water performance-wise. I would venture to say, then, that Leona Lewis's appeal centers primarily on how she looks. She can sing, but it's nothing that I haven't heard before. It is always interesting to be able to compare singers side by side when they perform together live. You can sound great on your album, but if you can't bring it live, then you can't bring it.
And does anyone else think that Leona Lewis bears an uncanny resemblance to Simon Cowell's girlfriend Terri Seymour, minus a few years? :-)
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