Songfacts®:

• This was released 10 months after X Factor winner Leona Lewis' UK chart-topping debut single "A Moment Like This." The 22-year-old from Islington took her time over the follow up and accompanying album as she didn't want to rush out a record that might disappoint all her fans who supported her on the show. It was worth the wait as in its debut week the single sold 218,000 copies, the biggest total for any UK single since "A Moment Like This." In it's debut week it outsold the rest of the UK top five put together.
• This is the first UK single of the download era to have both A and B-sides on the chart together. CD Track 2 is "Forgiveness," which also appeared in the UK Top 50. Its not clear how this happened as the songs were available together as a "digital bundle."
• The track was produced and co-written by OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder and was recorded in Los Angeles. At this point, Tedder had also written and produced for the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Lil' Jon, Natasha Bedingfield and Hilary Duff, but this was a big breakthrough for him. The other co-writer was actor and former boy band member Jesse McCartney.
  
  Tedder recalled to Billboard magazine: "Jesse had just had a huge hit - 'Beautiful Soul' - and 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."
• This became the biggest seller to date in the UK after its third week in the charts. It also became the first single since Tony Christie's 2005 "Is This The Way To Amarillo," to sell over 100,000 copies for three weeks in succession.
• 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."
• Spirit sold 375,872 copies in its first week in November 2007 to become the fastest-selling debut album in the UK 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 29th, 2009. Ironically, in doing so it knocked off Lewis' sophomore record, Echo from the top of the UK albums chart.
• This 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. The record had been held by Mary Hopkin, who in 1968 spent six weeks at the summit with "Those Were The Days."
• With sales of over three quarters of a million, "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.
• In February 2008 Lewis became the first winner of the X-Factor (the UK equivalent of American Idol), to chart in the Billboard Hot 100.
• "Bleeding Love" was originally intended for Jesse McCartney's third album, Departure. However record label boss Clive Davis heard the song and wanted it for Leona Lewis, who 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.'"
• Thanks to an appearance on Oprah, this hit #1 in the US in March 2008. Lewis became the first British female solo act to top the US chart since Kim Wilde did it in 1986 with "You Keep Me Hangin' On."
• On the US album 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 album 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 as she moved to Australia at the age of 5, she is generally thought of as Australian rather than British.
• Lewis wore a $200,000 Dolce & Gabbana dress in this song's video.
• 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."
• This was the first time in over 20 years that a British artist had topped the American charts with a song written or co-written by a McCartney.
• Jesse McCartney revealed that his songwriting inspiration for this song 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."
• When this song reached the top of The Billboard Hot 100 for a third time, it became the first track to have three separate turns at #1 since January 1979, when Chic's "Le Freak" returned to the summit for the second time. The only other two songs to ever return to #1 on two separate occasions were the Mills Brothers' "You Always Hurt the One You Love" in 1944 and Sammy Kaye's "Chickery Chick" the following year.
• 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 won the Best Video Award at the 2008 Mobo Awards. Spirit also won the prize for Best Album, at the same ceremony.
• This was the most downloaded single of 2008 on iTunes, with more than 3.2 million digital copies sold. The second most downloaded single was Cold play'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."