Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love

What this video is

Released in October 2007 as the lead international single from Leona Lewis's debut album Spirit, 'Bleeding Love' marked the apex of the mid-2000s reality-TV-to-mainstream-pop pipeline. Lewis had won The X Factor in December 2006 — the third series of the UK competition — and 'Bleeding Love' became the best-selling single of 2007 in the UK, spending seven weeks at number one: at the time the longest run by a…

Why it matters

A defining artefact of 2000s mainstream pop/R&B crossover, 'Bleeding Love' demonstrated that reality-TV graduates could compete globally on artistic merit. The song and its video helped legitimise the X Factor format internationally, bridging British soul-pop and American R&B production…

The director

Melina Matsoukas (born January 14, 1981, Bronx, NY) is an American director of music videos, commercials, film, and television. She holds an MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute and a BFA from NYU Tisch. She directed her first music video…