Leona Lewis 'A Moment Like This'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)
YouTube

22 year old X-Factor winner Leona Lewis broke all records when her single 'A Moment Like This' was released in December 2006 - It was downloaded 50 thousand times within 30 minutes of being made available online... She has been described as the "Lovechild of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey" due to her amazing soul-diva vocal range!!!

No, I don't remember when we decided that "soul diva" was a concept defined by vocal range either. But there's no denying that Leona Lewis does have one, and was an unsurprising winner of a contest judged by people who consider a lovechild of Whitney and Mariah was an appealing prospect (it was of course also a highly unlikely one). It's easy to forget now that Lewis was only the second X-Factor winner to score a Christmas Number One (and one of only five to do so to date, though all eight of them have topped the chart at some point), and as it turned out this single sold less than Shayne Ward's hit the previous year - its massive out of the gate sales first thing on Sunday morning owe more to the growth in the download market generally than any increased popularity.

Ultimately, that doesn't matter much because this isn't the song she's remembered for anyway - in fact it was already shop-worn, having been recorded by Kelly Clarkson when she won American Idol a couple of years earlier. That version was never a single in Britain, but Simon Cowell could hardly have failed to spot that it was almost tailor-made for a contest winner, with all its talk of "journeys", as shown by the old audition footage in the video too, of course. It's a narrative that doesn't totally fit with Lewis, who was clearly always going to have a career one way or another, but the bigger problem is that it's just a dull song. Perhaps surprisingly, it was co-written by John Reid of Nightcrawlers fame, but it's probably too late to do a "not fit for purpose" joke now. Either way, the track was always destined to sell well in the short term, but even though she's one of the few long-running stars to emerge from the show, and her album Spirit is by far the biggest seller connected with X-Factor, this was never likely to be more than an apologetic bonus track at the end.

Also appearing on: Now 68, 70, 72, 80 (with Avicii)
Available on: Spirit

Leon Jackson 'When You Believe'

Chart Peak: 1 (3 weeks)

YouTube

Two years down the line from Shayne Ward, 2007's crown was handed to Leon Jackson on the 15th of December. In line with the standard practice, this track was released as a download in the first minute of the next day, and CD singles were on the shelves for the Wednesday. Of course, this sort of deadline means that several other contestants had to record the song as well, and there was no chance of anything being tailored for him (not even his suit, by the looks of if). In fact the 2007 winner's song was a slight departure from the previous two years: for the first time since the long forgotten 2004, the song was a cover of an existing UK hit. 'When You Believe' had been a battle between Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston disguised as the theme tune to an animated movie.

Inevitably, Jackson's take is more subtle, but that's about all there it has going for it. The rushed nature of the process is emphasised by the video with it's cheapo back-projection and self-referential clips from the show (so at least Dannii Minogue gets to appear in the video for a Number One single, for once) and of course this gives away that they're not trying to reach out beyond the telly audience. Of course, that'll all it needed to get to the top of the chart, but the single only managed three more weeks in the Top 40 and by March 2009 he'd already been dropped by the record company.

Available on: Right Now

Shayne Ward 'Breathless'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

The only Shayne to chart in the UK so far, Ward had the Christmas Number One in 2005 as the winner of that year's X-Factor. Here we find him two years on, trying to keep the career going with what he calls "the best ballad I've ever heard" (it's OK, he didn't write it himself) and title track of the second album.

There is some evidence that this, unlike the off-the-peg winners single, is an attempt to establish a style that suits him. Which is not a bad idea, although it's less fortunate that the style which seems to suit him is this rather sickly number with a lyric that seems to have been plagiarised from pound-shop greetings cards. "If we had babies they'd look like you" - is this a love song to Winston Churchill? He sings it well, at least technically, although a have to say that this sort of register of male vocal isn't something I especially enjoy. He certainly gets your attention about two and a half minutes in.

People will tend to complain that shows like this generate winners who lack talent. In fact I tend to feel the problem is the opposite. Anyone who was as bad a singer as I am would be ritually humiliated in the first week or two; the people you end up with are talented, as Ward is, but the trouble is that's all they are. They're not really distinctive or creative enough to make a major impact on music, and yet they're burdened by a weight of expectation and by the knowledge that a big chunk of the record-buying public is primed to dislike them. Plus, of course, there's always the next winner down the the line. Perhaps it's significant that that this was his fifth hit within the space of two years: and yet in the almost equal time span since then, we've heard nothing from him at all. Which leads up on to tomorrow's post.

Also appearing on: Now 63, 68
Available on: Breathless