Worldwide, "Bleeding Love" was the biggest hit of 2008, topping the charts in most countries where it was released. It's an extremely passionate song about loving someone so intensely, it feels like it hurts. This kind of visceral love is quite romantic, but also a bit concerning.
Leona Lewis won the UK version of
The X Factor in December 2006 and released a cover of "
A Moment Like This" (Kelly Clarkson's
American Idol send-off song from 2002) in the UK as her first single. That song was the UK Christmas #1 and stayed on top for four weeks, establishing her as a star in that country. "Bleeding Love" was released in the UK in October 2007 and went straight to #1, where it stayed for seven weeks. The song was released worldwide a few months later and became a global smash - in America it went to #1 in April 2008 and stayed there for four weeks.
"Bleeding Love" was written by Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney, and produced by Tedder. At this point, Tedder's band OneRepublic was getting off the ground and he had credits on songs by the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Lil' Jon, Natasha Bedingfield and Hilary Duff. McCartney had a hit in 2004 with "
Beautiful Soul" and was also an established actor, best known for the series
Summerland.
Tedder told
Billboard about the writing session where they came up with the song: "I was going in with him and I felt like I didn't have it. I went back in my room, said, 'I'm gonna be an hour late to the session, what if we just did something simple?' I sat in my apartment in West LA and said, 'What would Prince do?' So I sang over an organ patch and had the entire verse and chorus of the song."
"We finished the song, verse and choruses that day," Tedder continued. "His label heard it, and from the top down said, 'It's not a hit.' So we went through three different keys to get it right for Leona Lewis. She killed it, and the rest is history."
Leona Lewis was mentored by
The X Factor creator Simon Cowell and signed to his label, Syco Music, which included "Bleeding Love" on her debut album,
Spirit. "
Better In Time" was the next single; it did well in many countries but nothing like "Bleeding Love." Her cover of Snow Patrol's "
Run" went to #1 in the UK at the end of 2008, and in 2009 her second album, Echo, was released, with the lead single, "
Happy."
Lewis stayed friendly with Simon Cowell but struggled at Syco, which started pressuring her to record music she didn't want to. She left the label in 2014, posting a long, handwritten
open letter explaining how Syco pushed her to do a covers album and why she felt they need to part ways. She moved on to Island Records and released an album in 2015 called
I Am that didn't get much attention. Lewis slowed down after that, got married in 2019 and had her first child in 2022.
In an interview with ilikemusic.com, Ryan Tedder was asked about this song: "It's a great tune but also it really fits with her voice and with the high expectations everybody had for her."
The Spirit album set various records in the UK, where it sold 375,872 copies in its first week in November 2007 to become the fastest-selling debut album there since records began. The previous fastest-selling debut was the Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not in January 2006, which managed 363,735 copies in its first week. It also broke the same record in Ireland.
A spokesman for Leona said: "On it's first day of sales alone Spirit sold over 130,000 copies, which was outselling the rest of the top ten put together. On average it worked out that Leona was selling an amazing 200 albums per minute."
Spirit also became the fourth fastest-selling album in UK history, behind the record breaking Be Here Now by Oasis, which sold 813,000 copies in its first seven days plus Coldplay's X&Y and Dido's Life For Rent.
Spirit's first-week record was eclipsed by Susan's Boyle debut album, I Dreamed a Dream, which sold over 410,000 copies in its first week on the chart dated November 29, 2009. Ironically, in doing so it knocked off Lewis' sophomore record, Echo from the top of the UK albums chart.
"Bleeding Love" spent seven weeks at #1 in the UK. In doing so it broke the record for the all-time longest running UK chart-topper by a British female artist, held by Mary Hopkin, who in 1968 spent six weeks at the summit with "
Those Were The Days."
With sales of over 750,000, "Bleeding Love" became the biggest selling single of 2007 in the UK, beating the runner-up, "
Umbrella" by Rihanna, which sold just over 500,000 copies.
American Idol winners often hit the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 2000s, but "Bleeding Love" was not just the first song by an X-Factor winner to hit #1 in the US, but the first to even reach the chart.
"Bleeding Love" was intended for Jesse McCartney's third album, Departure. However, record label boss Clive Davis heard the song and wanted it for Leona Lewis, whom he was championing. McCartney said: "We originally wrote the song for my record and then I guess Clive Davis heard it, called up and said, 'We really wanna use it for her album.'"
McCartney ended up releasing his version in 2008, and he often performs it in concert.
"Bleeding Love" was the first song by a British female solo artist to top the US chart since Kim Wilde did it in 1987 with "
You Keep Me Hangin' On."
On the US albums chart announced April 16, 2008, Spirit went straight in at #1, outselling her nearest rival four to one. Lewis thus became the first British artist to reach the top of the Billboard 200 with a debut album. Sade's 1985 album Promise was the only previous LP by a British woman to top the US albums chart, but Lewis was the first to debut at #1. British born Olivia Newton-John did have two chart-topping albums in 1974 and 1975, but because she moved to Australia at the age of 5, she is generally thought of as Australian rather than British.
There are two versions of the music video. In the first, Lewis wears a $200,000 Dolce & Gabbana dress and sings the song in a fancy apartment complex where various couples are going through some drama. The other video was made for America and is set in New York City.
Lewis spoke to the Daily Mirror about the album title: "There are many reasons I named the album Spirit - it is my heart and soul and the voice within that says everything is possible."
The song got a big bump in America thank to a March 17, 2008 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show where Lewis performed the song. This was her US television debut; she was joined by Simon Cowell, who was well known to American viewers thanks to American Idol.
Jesse McCartney revealed that his songwriting inspiration for "Bleeding Love" was the pain of a long distance relationship (specifically actress Katie Cassidy, daughter of singer David Cassidy). He said: "I kept thinking about being in love so much that it hurts. I was away from my girlfriend for four months at the time and I really wanted to throw in the towel (quit) and fly home. I was so in love that it was painful. It was like bleeding, it cut me open. That's how my head was and that idea just really fit the song."
In America, "Bleeding Love" fell off the #1 spot after a week, bumped by Mariah Carey's "
Touch My Body." Two weeks later, it reclaimed the top spot, where it stayed another week before getting licked by Lil Wayne's "
Lollipop." But a week later, "Bleeding Love" returned to the top for another two weeks.
When it reached the top for a third time, it became the first track to have three separate turns at #1 in its initial release since January 1979, when Chic's "
Le Freak" did it.
This song broke the record for the most spins on the Pop Radio Singles chart in the US with 10,665 plays in a one-week period. Lady Gaga's "
Bad Romance" established a new weekly plays high point in the tracking week of January 11-17, 2010 logging 10,859 spins. A week later a new record was set by Kesha's "
TiK ToK," with 11,224 plays.
Ryan Tedder told the Daily Mirror May 29, 2008 how he ended up writing this song for Leona Lewis: "I first discovered her on YouTube. OneRepublic had signed our deal but we weren't doing a lot so I was trying to do as much songwriting as possible. When I saw Leona, I knew nothing about X Factor and I didn't care either - I just knew I wanted to write her first song. She's a supreme perfectionist and knows her own voice better than any artist I've ever worked with. She's like a scientist when it comes to working in the studio. When I was writing Bleeding Love, I was very much in the mindset of what if it was 1990 and I was Prince, where would that lead the melody?"
This song won the Best Video Award at the 2008 Mobo Awards, a celebration of British music. Spirit also won the prize for Best Album at the same ceremony.
"Bleeding Love" was the most downloaded single of 2008 on iTunes, with more than 3.2 million digital copies sold. The second most downloaded single was Coldplay's "
Viva La Vida," followed by Flo Rida's "
Low."
In an interview with The Daily Mail January 8, 2010, Ryan Tedder revealed that a certain Minneapolis artist was an influence on this song.
"I was thinking of Prince when I wrote 'Bleeding Love,'" he said. "I had a young female singer, Leona Lewis, so I thought: what would Prince do? I wanted a song that wasn't simply ear-candy, so I combined a hard, gritty drum beat with a beautiful chord sequence."
According to figures compiled by PPL for the 2011 Valentine's Day, this is the most played love song in the UK. The figures released by the airplay royalties body show that one in 15 songs have the word "love" or a variation of it in the title. PPL communications director Jonathan Morrish said: "Love truly is, and always has been, the subject, which inspires much great music."
"Bleeding Love" took on a whole new meaning for Leona Lewis after she became a mother in 2022. "I used to sing it in a romantic love kind of way," she told Kelly Clarkson in a 2025 interview. "But the kind of love that I'm now open to because of my little girl is so deep. I can't help but think of her and smile when I sing it."
