Even though Thanksgiving is right around the corner, we can’t HELP but be super excited for Christmas because, well, it’s ALMOST here!
And helping us get into the holiday spirit are the many talent artists who are releasing Christmas albums this year, like the uber talented Leona Lewis! Her upcoming album Christmas With Love, is simply perfect and we can’t HELP but be thrust into the Holidaze spirit a liiiiitttle bit early!
We recently got to chat with Leona about her album and we learned SOOOO much about her musical background, her single which we EXCLUSIVELY premiered, and her relationship with Simon Cowell!! Yeah, he played elf on this album, as only Simon can!
Ch-ch-check out everything LL had to dish on the X-mas disc and more …AFTER THE JUMP!!!
On writing her own music:
I loved writing on this record because I’ve not written songs like this before and so for me, it was like the most fun I’ve ever had writing, because I could totally get out of where I usually go and go to different head space….To be able to go into a genre that has heavily influenced me in music. It was like a breath of fresh air and it was so much fun.
On the meaning behind One More Sleep, her original single from the album:
One More Sleep is basically, it’s a thing that a lot of kids say like, there’s three days left until we’re doing something fun. Like it’s your birthday or Christmas, you’ll be like “oh its three more sleeps left, count down to one more sleep left!” And One More Sleep is really about that feeling.
For me I’m on promo and touring and I’m away for so much of the year, but Christmas day is the one day I look forward to the most because I know I’m getting a day off. I know I’m going to see my friends and my family. I know I’m going to see my boy, like it’s so exciting for me.
So literally that song is that feeling, it encompasses that whole song. It’s just the excitement, almost a childlike excitement that you have the night before Christmas. It’s really very close to my heart, so it was really fun.”
On what went into recording the album:
I recorded this in the summertime and it actually came together quite quickly. [Recording Christmas songs in the summer] is a weird feeling. You really have to put yourself into that headspace, but it’s really cool. I hadn’t really planned to do one. I’d thought about doing a Christmas album in the past but all of a sudden this came together.
I’d really started to record in the frame of the Christmas songs that I loved when I was growing up and the Motown kind of records that were played in my house at Christmas time. So it just kind of took on a life of its own and got [that] Motown vibe about it.
On her roots in Opera:
When I got the chance to do this record I thought, “I want to do a classical song.” And I remember Jeff [her producer] was like “Wow that’s so cool. You sing opera?!” … [Well,] I trained in opera and that’s what I thought I was going to do [in my life]. I didn’t start singing contemporary songs until my teens.
It’s something I trained for quite a long time [so,] I wanted to do that on this album. I went back to my vocal coach and I trained for a while to get it right. I wanted it to be authentic. So that [Ave Maria] was definitely the most challenging of all of the songs because it was really going back to the basics of my training.
– On Simon Cowell & the advice he gave her:
He suggested, “Why don’t you do a Christmas album? I want to see something different.├óΓé¼┬¥ And then when I actually did it, I had so much fun, so he really was the one to push me to try something new… I think the best advice he’s ever given me is to just follow my instincts and go with my gut feelings and I did on this one. He’s cool for advice. He’s head of my label, so you know he knows what he’s talking about!
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