New Single > Leona Lewis > Fire Under My Feet

Leona's last foray into the charts was her brilliant, underrated festive album Christmas, With Love which spawned number three future Christmas staple One More Sleep. Her third album Glassheart was a bit of a flop in the UK, not that it was bad, it just wasn't very Leona and the step toward a more electronic heavy sound smothered her already faint personality. So what do you do when Simon Cowell is extinguishing your creativity, a flare no one knew you had? You sack him. Leona moved from Syco to Island, a much better record label and the results are very impressive.

Her new single, the first to be lifted from her upcoming fifth studio effort I Am is called Fire Under My Feet and it is the Leona song we've been waiting for. She wrote it herself with the help of Toby Gad (mastermind behind Beyoncé's If I Were a Boy) and it's so Ella Henderson that Ryan Tedder must be twiddling knobs somewhere in the mix! From the acapella opening to the anthemic chorus and thumping folksy pop beat that carries you to the vocally explosive climax, this song should put Leona back on top.

5 / 5

Ella Henderson - Chapter One (Album Review)

The Xfactor was once a force to be reckoned with. It governed the charts in the run up to Christmas, with retro covers performed by hopefuls week on week appearing in the top 10 decades after their original release. In some ways the Xfactor did a great service to commercial pop music by increasing music sales in the Autumn/Winter period. Things haven't been so immense down Xfactor street in recent years though, with winner's sales figures nowhere near what they once were and no winner having quite the success of Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke. The format is weakening and its transparency is becoming all the more apparent with constant gimmicks and ridiculous contestants. Thankfully, it doesn't take a winner to release an incredible album. Alumni Rebecca Ferguson's Heaven is the perfect example, runner up to uber douche Matt Cardle (somehow now on his fourth album) it sold over 500,000 copies in the UK and quite rightly so. The shock exit of similarly likeable contestant Ella Henderson in week 6 was flabbergasting, a travesty at the time. It's clear that it was probably for the best because here she is a few years on with her debut album Chapter One and it's a damn doozy.