Leona Lewis

After her introduction through The X Factor, Lewis released Spirit in 2007. Bleeding Love, written by Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney and produced by Tedder, put her voice against an unusually firm rhythmic setting for a large vocal-pop record.

The drums give the song a persistent physical pulse, while the melody asks the singer to move through a much wider range. Lewis can make the refrain expansive without sounding as if she has left the track behind. The performance grows out of the beat rather than sitting above it as a display.

Better in Time offers a softer introduction to the same voice. The phrasing has room to be conversational, allowing the tone and the end of a line to carry some of the feeling.

The expanded 2008 version of Spirit brought Forgive Me and Run into the album’s wider story. Forgive Me changes the rhythmic emphasis, while Run gives the sustained vocal and the rising arrangement a different kind of space. Hearing those recordings together makes the range of the first era clearer.

Echo followed in 2009, with later albums including Glassheart and I Am. The production settings changed, but the voice remained a clear point of continuity.

Bleeding Love is still an especially complete introduction because it brings power and proportion into the same performance. The large notes have somewhere to go, and the restrained lines make their arrival matter.