For a 23-year-old, Leona Lewis is quite good at waiting for what she wants.

After winning “X-Factor,” the British equivalent of “American Idol,” she holed up in studios around the world for more than a year, plugging away at her debut album out of the spotlight. Instead of trying to conquer the world all at once, she started with England last year and slowly worked her way through Europe.

Even with the arrival of “Spirit” (J/SyCo; Grade: B-plus) in the United States last week on the heels of her No. 1 single “Bleeding Love,” Lewis is taking her time.

“My family is coming,” she says, when asked how she was celebrating her No. 1 hit - the first No. 1 hit for a British female solo artist since Kim Wilde’s version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in 1987. “We’ll celebrate when they get here.”

And now, all that waiting is about to pay off. Lewis, like her incredibly accomplished debut, is a rarity in the struggling music industry. She sounds like a sure thing.

Her vocals can stand up against powerhouses like Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, but she has a vulnerability that makes people feel they can relate to her. She can handle the big ballads that the over-35 crowd picks up on their weekly Target or Wal-Mart run as well as the hip-hop-tinged up-tempo numbers that the kids are downloading.

Lewis says she learned her patience after leaving her performance arts high school when she was 17. “I knew what it was like to be doing gigs and then going into the studio and demo-ing songs,” she says. “I wanted to make a strong album, one that really represented me, and to do that I knew I needed time.”
She co-wrote the Celine Dion-like pop anthem “Whatever It Takes” and the Carey-esque ballad “Here I Am,” while working to “put her spin” on songs from Akon (”Forgive Me”), Avril Lavigne (”I Will Be”) and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder and singer-songwriter Jesse McCartney (”Bleeding Love”).

Lewis wants a career like Dion or Alanis Morissette, “strong women who handle themselves well.”

Will that happen? Lewis is ready to wait and see!

- Source: MercuryNews.com