Bleeding Love - Background

Background

In the Summer of 2006, Lewis entered third series of the British reality singing competition, The X Factor, and after performing and competing against other aspiring hopefuls, the British public voted her the winner on 16 December 2006, receiving 60% of the final vote. As the winner, Lewis received the prize of a £1 million recording contract with Sony BMG, of which Simon Cowell is an A&R executive, and with Cowell's own record label, Syco Music.

Meanwhile, in February 2007, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder and pop singer-songwriter Jesse McCartney had written the song "Bleeding Love" for McCartney's third studio album, Departure. However, his record label, Hollywood Records, did not like the song. Tedder believed it was a "massive" song and the record company was "out of his mind". Despite his own reality TV background, Tedder had previously made the decision not to work with contestants from the singing competition American Idol, but he had not heard of The X Factor, and on being shown a website about Lewis, he thought that "her voice just sounded unreal," saying that "from a writer's perspective, this girl – with or without a TV show – has one of the best voices I've ever heard." On hearing that Cowell was looking for songs for Lewis's debut album, Tedder rearranged "Bleeding Love", changed the key and tailored it to suit her voice. They pitched the song to Cowell, who said it was "the one". After the success of Lewis's version, the song was re-recorded by McCartney being included as a bonus track on the international version of the album, Departure.