Another cliche pop album

22-year-old Leona Lewis is a British singer who was the winner of popular TV talent search show “X Factor” in 2006.

She is only the sixth U.K. solo female artist to ever top the U.S. Hot 100 with her single “Bleeding Love.” The song was the best-selling single of 2007 in the U.K. Spirit is the young singer’s debut album.

Spirit starts off with the soft-pop ballad “Bleeding Love.” This sugary song is catchy enough to have pop fans singing along to her yearning voice that sounds like a cross between Céline Dion and Cher. The song has an organ that plays in the background to create a layer of sound against the club-like dance beats and her multi-tracked vocals. The song sounds like thousands of pop songs already on the radio. Despite this, the song has already proven to be a commercial success.

“Better In Time” is a piano ballad laced with a hip-hop beat. This song will likely be her next single, as it’s poppy enough that it sounds like it could be on the soundtrack to a Disney movie, or a song you would hear in exciting places such as a doctor’s office or a family restaurant. It’s not that the song is that bad; it’s just that it’s about as original as any other Top 40 song that you might have heard on the radio at any given time in the past quarter-century.

While Lewis is without a doubt a good singer, singing talent has never been proof of musical talent, and that sentiment is proven time and time again on this release, as it is full of melisma and overdone vibratos, pop cliches that everyone has likely mocked at one time or another. This album seems like it would be in every 14-year-old girl’s collection, except for the fact that they likely already have 100 CDs just like it.

Spirit sounds every bit as ridiculous and nauseating as anything else a teenage girl would listen to. It’s amazing that the record industry still puts out complete pre-packaged shit like this album, yet millions eat it up like candy.