Leona

Leona Louise (born 3 April 1986) is a British performer, actress, activist, and actor. She was born and raised in London Borough of Islington and took classes at Croydon's BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. Lewis was recognized as a national talent by winning the third series of The X Factor in 2006 and was awarded the PS1 million recording contract in partnership with Syco Music. The single she was awarded, which was a cover song by Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", peaked at number one for four weeks on UK Singles Chart and broke an all-time record of 100,000 digital downloads within just thirty minutes. Clive Davis, Lewis's American record label J Records signed Lewis a five-album contract in February of 2007. Lewis has continued to be successful by releasing Spirit, her first studio album. It reached platinum status 10x recognized in the UK. The album was one of the top four albums sold in 2000, as well as one of the best-selling UK albums. According to the Official Charts Company, Spirit is the highest-seller debut album from a female artist at the turn of the century. Its first single, "Bleeding Love", went on to chart for seven weeks in the UK. 1 in the UK and was also the top-selling single in the year 2007. The song was also the highest-selling track in the US the same year. Lewis won the Billboard Best New Artist Award subsequent year. Her debut album was Echo in 2009 and also recorded "I Love You" to be the film's theme song. Lewis also debuted "Collide," a joint work in collaboration with Swedish DJ Avicii. In 2011 she also dropped Hurt The Extended Play of her debut EP. Her album Glassheart, her third studio effort, Glassheart (2012), represented a fresh direction in music for Lewis who draws inspiration from dubstep and electronic music. Her Glassheart Tour was in the middle of 2013 when she started recording songs for her debut Christmas album. Later that year, Christmas with Love was released, and included the lead single "One more sleep" was ranked third in the UK. Lewis was one of the few British female solo artist, was the first artist to make it into the top 5 with eight songs. This is more than Olivia Newton John's record which had seven.