I’ve always said that Shayne Ward would do very well to cover a Darin song, but it seems, rather unexpectedly, Leona has beaten him to it! Looking at the list of known tracks for her new album Spirit on Wikipedia, I saw the name Homeless, the same as a ballad from Darin’s last album Break The News. I searched for ‘Leona Lewis Homeless’ on YouTube and found this clip of a girl singing “a song called homeless that i found on youtube a while ago”, with the tags “Leona Lewis New Single”. A quick Google agrees that Homeless was one of the songs rumoured to be a single instead of Bleeding Love, and she has performed it in America a few months ago, which perhaps was the source of the clip this girl saw.
Of course it could just be a big mix-up, but I think this song would suit Leona. It’s just a shame that it seems Darin will get no credit for being its first singer, as the page about Leona’s album on Wikipedia says “apart from one song, the album will contain entirely new material”. But this is not new material – whether or not Darin wrote the song (I doubt that he did but don’t have the album cover handy), it is a cover version if she releases it, so I hope this will be acknowledged. It’s also a shame that out of all the amazing Darin songs that could be brought to a wider audience, this rather boring ballad is the one that will be heard. Then again, relistening to his version now, it’s still better than most things, just for being sung by Darin.