Leona Lewis review – walking in a decidedly surreal winter wonderland
The 2006 X Factor winner’s career could hardly have got off with more of a bang: No 1 in 35 countries with her first single Bleeding Love, and two UK chart-topping albums. Since then, though, Lewis has split with mentor Simon Cowell and in 2016 pulled out of a Broadway production of Cats citing an autoimmune condition. Without a studio album since 2015’s I Am, she is finally touring 2013 festive album Christmas, With Love. “Has anyone got their trees up yet?” she yells. “My kind of people.”
After previous forays into clubbier sounds, here the 38-year old is recasting herself as a sort of Christmassy Ella Fitzgerald. Seasonal staples such as Winter Wonderland and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town are rendered – in post-Bublé style – as swing jazz, with big vocal crescendoes, dry ice and a tree that lights up on cue at the end of White Christmas. Some moments are positively surreal, such as the jazz reworking of Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day or an icky virtual duet with the “iconic vocal” of the late Nat “King” Cole. Future generations may talk in fearful tones about the night they witnessed Lewis performing earnest 2018 ballad You Are The Reason alongside a slow-dancing couple from the audience who are wearing antlers.
Still, after a short monologue about unspecified personal and global “dark times”, Lewis beautifully taps into the melancholy at the heart of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and isn’t visibly fazed by the dollop of paper snow suddenly plonking on her head. Snow Patrol’s Run – delivered with power and vulnerability – receives a deserved ovation, suggesting that Lewis remains a big voice in search of material she can emotionally connect with.
A neat segue of Bleeding Love and Higher Love takes her back towards R&B. Lewis looks momentarily startled when a young woman she invites up to sing during One More Sleep turns out to have the X factor: a fantastic voice. Still, the 2013 hit single is that rare thing, a glorious latter-day Christmas song, and it ends an uneven evening with joyful festive cheer.
• At Sec Armadillo, Glasgow on 29 November, then touring.