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Glassheart is the third studio album by British recording artist Leona Lewis. The album was released on 12 October 2012 by Syco Music and is Lewis's first release in partnership with RCA Records following a restructure at Sony Music Entertainment which led to the closure of J Records. Glassheart was conceived in 2010 shortly after Lewis completed her first headline tour, The Labyrinth. It was originally scheduled for release in November 2011 but was rescheduled several times throughout 2012 to accommodate further recording sessions and more creative time for the project.
On the album, Lewis is reunited with Ryan Tedder, producer of previous singles "Bleeding Love" and "Happy". Lewis also worked with new producers including Naughty Boy, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins and Dallas Austin amongst others. "Collide", a collaboration with house music DJ Avicii, was released on 2 September 2011 as the album's first single. It would go on to become a top-five hit in the UK and Lewis's first single to top the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart in the US.
To bridge the gap between Lewis's last album Echo and Glassheart, Lewis teamed with Fraser T Smith to release Hurt: The EP. Following its positive reception, Smith was hired as Glassheart's executive producer, and has credits on many of the album's songs. Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé aided Lewis to write the second single "Trouble", a dark song inspired by Lewis's break-up with childhood sweetheart Lou Al-Chamaa. "Trouble" features US rapper Childish Gambino and was premiered on 21 August 2012, ahead of its digital release on 5 October 2012.
User Album Review
Leona’s latest largely plays up to expectations.
Here’s a game: try and imagine what this Leona Lewis album sounds like, based on your knowledge of her previous work. Finished? Congratulations! You’re absolutely right.
After an uncomfortable excursion into happier dance music with Collide – her notably absent single from 2011– Leona is here to restate her core principles. Namely that a) she is always unlucky in love, unless she is swooning in melancholy bliss; b) she is always sad about how things have turned out, even if she is swooning in melancholy bliss; and c) her melancholy bliss is the size of a mountain. A really big one, with a very sharp peak.
And of course, this creates a problem for anyone hoping to take her career in new directions. Over the course of these 12 songs there are all sorts of production nods to happier music: the dubstep drop (Glassheart), the ticky breakbeats (Come Alive), the thick shag pile bass on the up-tempo numbers (note: there are no up-tempo numbers, there are only the not-ballads). But sitting on top, as always, is the eternally downcast Leona, the sensitive flower with the elephant bellow.
Even on Fireflies, the only chipper-ish moment in the whole collection, she sounds devastated – by beauty, in this case. That’s her natural tone of voice.
So of course the songs that tend to fly best, on their own terms at least, are the uncluttered muscle ballads: When It Hurts, Fingerprint, Un Love Me. How very expectable.
But then there’s Trouble. It’s the sole song that suggests Leona is an active participant in her own misery, the only song that takes her mournful wail and puts it somewhere new – in this case, a stern lesson in the power politics of a love gone bad, resting on a pillowy base of Massive Attack strings. Taken straight, or with a bitter twist of Childish Gambino, it’s a powerful draft.
Four or five more songs like that from contributing writer Emeli Sandé, maybe a collaboration with Jessie Ware, and this would feel like a fresh start. As it is, it’s simply the next Leona Lewis album.
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