Leona Lewis has made her success look effortless, but the UK singer knew she had one chance to nail it when she was asked to sing to a group of legendary US songwriters.

As Leona Lewis walked down the hallways of Oprah Winfrey’s television studio, her nerves started to fray.

‘‘All those pictures of famous actors and musicians and I was kinda freaking myself out about it,” Lewis recalls.

Sure, her debut single Bleeding Love had topped the charts back home in the UK and further afield in Australia.

But this was Lewis’s chance to break it big time in America, which previously hadn’t cared too much for winners of Britain’s talent quest The X Factor. They had enough American Idol contenders to contend with.

‘‘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,” she says.

‘‘So I got totally lost in it and lost in my zone.”

Her performance on Oprah — and the television powerbroker’s ringing endorsement afterwards — was the catalyst for Lewis to create US chart history.

Bleeding Love was the first single by a British female to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Kim Wilde claimed the position in 1987 with You Keep Me Hangin’ On.

That achievement propelled Lewis’s debut album Spirit to the top spot last week and an international pop superstar was born.

Orchestrating this global success are two of the music industry’s most powerful men — Simon Cowell and Clive Davis. They formed a joint venture to launch Lewis into the same pop stratosphere as Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys, two careers Davis had been instrumental in guiding.

The first step was to introduce Lewis to the established hitmakers and a clutch of newcomers who have proven invaluable in giving her music a contemporary and a classic sound.

The 23-year-old Londoner knew she had one shot to seal the deal and sang her heart out in front of a room full of the men who would help give her the words and melodies that music fans would connect with.

‘‘The thing with Simon Cowell is he’s been able to introduce me to many more people than I would have had access to in terms of songwriters,” Lewis says.

‘‘And Clive Davis — this is the man famous for Alicia Keys and Whitney. They set up this showcase for the songwriters, but it was up to me when they met me to pull it out of the bag. Everyone was kind enough to agree to work with me.”

It’s an impressive rollcall of songwriters — OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and pop prince Jesse McCartney co-wrote Bleeding Love. Other credits include Akon, Ne-Yo, Dallas Austin, J.R. Rotem, Billy Steinberg and Walter Afanasieff.

‘‘This is just an introduction to what I want to do and will be doing in the future,” Lewis says.

‘‘When I first started I did a lot of classical training, a lot of opera, then went into jazz and blues and more contemporary music. I have a lot of styles I draw from and I wanted a bit of everything on there.”

The daughter of a ballerina and a part-time DJ, Lewis spent her child-hood singing, acting and studying at performing-arts schools.

She had a crack at breaking into the industry in her late teens, recording an album that failed to stir interest from the labels.

Lewis was about to give up her dream of a singing career when a boyfriend convinced her to try television talent quests.

Since winning The X Factor in 2006, she has been carefully developed by Cowell and Davis.

‘‘Everyone around me is really respectful of me and what I need to do this. I am used to working hard and I want to work hard,” she says.

‘‘I’m not taking it for granted. You never know when this is going to end.”

There have been high points.

She bought a Mini Cooper, performed at Davis’s uber A-list Grammys party and met Lionel Richie.

‘‘I got to meet Lionel Richie, which was incredible. That was a big one. I nearly combusted. My mum was ‘Calm down, girl’,” Lewis says with a laugh.

Lewis doesn’t drink, lives with her parents and credits them with keeping her real. She’s girly, giggly and seems to lack the diva gene, even though she cites Houston and Mariah Carey as artists whose career paths she would like to follow.

‘‘My family really keep me sane,” she says. ‘‘Whenever I’m tired or down, I always have my family there to phone and rely on for support.”

Source: Herald Sun