CD Review: Leona Lewis' Spirit

I was speaking to my sister on the telephone, bitching as usual about how and why top-forty music like Leona Lewis is generally cringe-worthy, when my sister succinctly asked, a perturbed edge to her voice, “I get it, you hate the radio. But what do you hate about Leona Lewis?”

Hollywood had already given me the perfect answer. “To begin with, everything,” I said.

Here is where I should spend the rest of this review explaining in cliché terms exactly why Leona Lewis’ recent release, Spirit , lacks any real musical merit. Frankly, I’m getting tired of clichés, so we’ll get through this as quickly as possible. Leona Lewis has a pretty voice and she’s singing pretty little pop diddies. The album contains plenty of generic backbeats made by all kinds of electronic mumbo jumbo, all in an attempt to speed up the feel of the music to make her vocals sound more inspiring, I think, maybe? Even in slowly crooned ballads like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” or “Footprints in The Sand” this supposed inspirational quality fails. Spirit ends up sounding jacked up on meth—Lewis’ vocals tease briefly as if they had good intentions at one point but then she or her producers got bored and immediately left whatever concept they were concocting to try something else. Whatever those somethings ended up being, they clearly failed, too.

But that’s not why I think Spirit is a shitty album. Even if I loved top forty, even if I loved Leona Lewis, I would still be visibly upset after listening to her debut album. Her pop/R&B, however you define the look-at-me-trying-way-to-hard-to-warble-as-distinctly-as-Mariah-Carey bullshit, should have glamour and attitude. Yet, even after watching the music video for “Bleeding Love,” I found myself asking, “Who is Leona Lewis?” Sure, she can sing and, of course, she’s hot, but what the fuck is she warbling about?

Ding. The answer is, of course, the man that epitomizes her. Leona Lewis is that hot chick in middle school turned sorostitute turned would-be trophy wife, or so her music says. Gentlemen, Gentlemen if you are looking for the most vapid star on the planet to woo, you’ve found her. Her music is goofily sentimental, her lyrics are constantly heartsick and love-filled, and I bet she’d be the type of woman with so little self-esteem she’d shit on a glass table over your face for a bit of cocaine if you asked her, but I’m just guessing. Want someone to cling to you as if there is no tomorrow? Ms. Lewis even has a song titled “I’m you,” where she eloquently asserts, “ I am your soul/I am your heart/ My strength is yours/Baby, it’s true.”

Where is the previously mentioned glamour and attitude? If you want to give me feminine pop music, give me something juicy. Give me Madonna, oozing sex appeal, singing like a virgin for the very first time. Give me Britney Spears in a red jumpsuit or making out with another pop star or huskily singing “Toxic.” C’mon, top-forty music without its glitz and glamour is just a bunch of pathetic, good-looking people singing crappy songs. If you want people to worship you, you have to give them a reason.

Leona Lewis needs to show me her spirit, not her tether. Because without the glitz and glamour, all I’m really left with is a pretty voice.