Cautious: Leona Lewis fails to convince with new album away from Simon Cowell's label
Anthony Harvey/Getty
John Aizlewood11 September 2015
Having parted company with her label in the wake of 2012’s disastrous Glassheart and an ill-advised Christmas album the following year, X Factor singer Leona Lewis’s career had seemingly ground to a halt.
Leona Lewis - I Am
Instead, astonishingly, she’s managed to snaffle a new deal but I Am is defiantly more of the same and she’s as cautious as a learner driver on test day.
Tinny, timid production makes I Am sound like it was recorded at home but Lewis’s vocals are still anodyne cruise-ship fare and she still mistakes caterwauling for emotion.
The Essence Of Me, I Got You and Thank You are as clichéd as their titles and any suggestion of depth seems to give her the vapours.
I Am will doubtless be billed as a new start but it feels like an ending.
(Island)
