CityLife

Main event: Leona Lewis

Leona Lewis

MEN Arena - June 4+6, 2010

Since Leona Lewis graduated from the X Factor in 2006, many lesser students at the dog-eat-dog talent school world have fallen by the wayside.

Leon Jackson, Ray Quinn... CityLife even had to nip online to check the name of December’s winner (young Geordie sweetheart and mums’ favourite Joe McElderry, fact fans).

And yet one or two others have threatened to spoil her long overdue assault on Britain, too. They may have only scored the runner-up prize, but JLS are the biggest success story of the show back home – bar none.

But that, of course, is the key issue. Leona, hailed by Simon Cowell and others as the new Whitney Houston when she won the show over three years ago, was just the kind of diva who would make it big in America with the right label shove.

And so they shoved her hard – to the tune of a reported 10m-dollar record deal.

It paid off, of course. Leona’s first album, Spirit, debuted at the top spot in nine countries and cracked the US immediately. In the singles market, it scored Lewis five Top 5 UK singles.

And while her follow-up, Echo, didn’t quite repeat that success, stalling at an unlucky for some 13 in America, it still bagged her another No 1 back home.

That chart hiccup hasn’t made her backers twitchy. In fact, quite the opposite; a few days ago, she embarked on her first British tour and there’s no working her way up the live show ladder for Leona – she has the privilege of being an arena star from the moment she warbles her first note on tour.

Reviews of her shows so far have been mixed: five stars for her remarkable voice, but two or three for the bizarre, labyrinthine staging and uber-choreographed performance. Lest we forget, too much rehearsal was said to be the undoing of Britney on her last tour, just as too little preparation was Whitney’s downfall. Robotic divas, it seems, can be just as painful to watch as recovering ones.

It’s hard to imagine Leona throwing her hands up and saying ‘que sera’, though. In her own biog, she admits to a level of fragility that would reduce the school bullies to sniggers – when she listens back to her recordings, she says, she’s often moved to tears.

“It’s weird I know, but sometimes it feels like something outside myself,” she told her biographer Adam Mattera.

 “It’s not necessarily that a lyric is even something that’s happened to me but I almost feel like it has because I can get swept up by the emotion and when I do it can be overwhelming.”

It’s a shame she doesn’t let that show, because the foibles and quirks of her character seem to be all too often hidden or played up.

She is, we’ve learned, a fervent campaigner against animal cruelty and unethical production. Her current stage outfits, so goes the latest online tale, are all made of ethically-sourced materials.

She admits to a passion for period clothing (again to her biographer: “If I could walk around in period costume all day I would”) and hunts out ‘vegetarian shoes’ on her high street shopping sprees.

All a bit diva-ish. And yet, these are fine qualities, and important ones to keep hold of. 

CityLife hopes she’s left just a little room in her first arena show for us to find out who Leona Lewis the former pizza waitress and aspiring star has become since the public set her off on her amazing journey.

£29/£43.50.