Leona Lewis has a whole new look: all mouse-brown hair, sullen expression and the oddest-looking facial jewellery since Kate Nash misappropriated the bindi in the video she made to accompany “Underestimate The Girl”. It really doesn’t suit her.
Forgive me. I too find it pretty disrespectful when writers comment on an artist’s appearance before they start to consider what a work sounds like. But as I listened to Glassheart, the third album from one-time X Factor winner and ridiculously successful Lewis, it was the artwork I kept coming back to. The head-and-shoulder shot makes her look washed-out, sallow. It’s probably just a bad Photoshop job - in which case, it’s a fairly effective metaphor for the album itself.
Listen, there’s no denying that Lewis can sing, but setting that voice against a backdrop of overproduced beats in an attempt to mould its owner into yet another urban/dance act is a misguided move. This is the artist who took one of Snow Patrol’s overwrought, mawkish faux-indie songs and actually made them more boring. You can’t get your groove on to Leona Lewis, for the same reason you wouldn’t pack glow sticks and smuggled bottles of VK if you were going to see Celine Dion.
That’s not to say that the album’s “executive producer” Fraser T Smith hasn’t tried his utmost. While the more earnest, piano-driven tracks like “Fireflies” stick to synthesised strings and fake hand-claps for accent, others - “Come Alive” chief among them - get the dance-pop kitchen sink thrown at them, right down to that wub-wub-wub Nineties rave scene sound effect that’s shown up on everything from Rihanna to Nicki Minaj of late.
Glassheart is stuffed with the sort of songs that beg to be labelled "intimate" or "personal", but given it comes complete with enough co-writers and production credits to fill a football team I’m crying foul. The alternative is to assume that one of the UK’s most successful pop females really harbours no greater ambition than to “stay at home with the kids, cleaning up where you live, even though I’m educated” - as she sings on “I to You” - while trying not to think about the millions more copies this album is likely to sell to teenage girls.