36 minutes ago, Scene said:

100%

And they did the exact same thing with the song Glassheart. 🥱 It’s like they desperately wanted her to be doing ‘current’ music yet got cold feet when it came to picking singles. Seriously, Lovebird over GH? 😭😭

'Lovebird' was such a bizarre choice, although I kind of feel like by that point the campaign was dead in the water and whatever they chose would have perhaps struggled in the lower resches of the top 100 at best.

I swear 'Fireflies' was confirmed at first? Which would've been a better (although not the best) choice.

I took my mum to see Leona in 2013 because a friend pulled out of coming along a couple of hours before. She wasn't a fan whatsoever beforehand so was just coming to not waste the ticket but was then wowed by Leona's whole performance that evening and Glassheart was so great in the encore. I think she was quite surprised there were a few dancier songs in the set because ballad after ballad was pushed as singles apart from Forgive Me and Collide.

Such a missed opportunity, again, to not release Glassheart as a single. One More Sleep later proved that the public would react to something a little more uptempo and fun, I guess the label got scared off at Forgive Me 'only' making No.5 at what was more or less her career peak.

Edited Sunday at 12:482 days by gooddelta

1 hour ago, gooddelta said:

I took my mum to see Leona in 2013 because a friend pulled out of coming along a couple of hours before. She wasn't a fan whatsoever beforehand so was just coming to not waste the ticket but was then wowed by Leona's whole performance that evening and Glassheart was so great in the encore. I think she was quite surprised there were a few dancier songs in the set because ballad after ballad was pushed as singles apart from Forgive Me and Collide.

Such a missed opportunity, again, to not release Glassheart as a single. One More Sleep later proved that the public would react to something a little more uptempo and fun, I guess the label got scared off at Forgive Me 'only' making No.5 at what was more or less her career peak.

Forgive Me was in that huge female pop release week though, wasn’t it? So 5 was strong (but yeah, I get it - also it’s not a fave. It feels unfinished to me! A diet bop though)

3 minutes ago, Tafty said:

Forgive Me was in that huge female pop release week though, wasn’t it? So 5 was strong (but yeah, I get it - also it’s not a fave. It feels unfinished to me! A diet bop though)

Yeah true, bad timing. I guess Syco would have expected more though from a non-album release regardless as I think they thought she was untouchable at that point.

As a forum, most people were predicting No.1/2 for it initially, I suppose before we knew what it would be up against:

That thread is a super entertaining read altogether actually, lots of people were super sure in it being No.1 and thought Girls Aloud had no chance. The Promise really ended up being an unexpected career renaissance for them.

Edited Sunday at 14:082 days by gooddelta

'Forgive Me' was also widely regarded as a weak rip-off of 'The Sweet Escape' (although I quite liked it), I remember a lot of my IRL circle at the time commenting similar. Plus I think 'Run' overshadowed and sunk it within a couple of weeks of its release.

*Edit - looking back at that thread, lol at me thinking it was A) better than 'The Promise' and B) thinking Dido was in the mix!

Edited Sunday at 15:062 days by Jessie Where

Forgive Me was a bit of a piss-weak uptempo for her though. I think after Leona’s international success, Syco just got super complacent (never having an act so big). IIRC Simon didn’t even have Leona do a US radio tour for Happy - just threw it out and assumed it would be another surefire hit. The audacity! 🥲

I've been listening to "Happy" a little bit late. Should've been #1.

Wish Echo can reach triple Platinum someday☹️ Such an underrated album

I really enjoyed my play of the album yesterday, for the first time in full in many years.

So many potential singles that could have had amazing videos and we didn't really get any of them, the era was curtailed so early.

I forgot how much I loved Brave. It could be on a film soundtrack.

It was also nice to hear Fly Here Now again after so long, and I don't know that I'd ever heard Heartbeart before?

I did (and do) really, really like Happy, but I agree, it wasn't the best choice to launch the album. It came across as... expected. It was quite a bit more subtle than Bleeding Love, but still along the lines of that kind of song. They should have tried something completely different, not play it so safe - surprise people and show that Leona had range. Outta My Head was screaming out to be that moment, it would have been a statement of intent that there was a lot more to her as an artist - and yet it was left as an album track, why?

Stop Crying Your Heart Out as a kind of promo song was, again, a safe move. You could tell that it was potentially being lined up as the next Run but it just didn't happen.

I actually adore I Got You, but it sadly wasn't the song to make people sit up and pay attention.

Agree with pretty much everything that has been said.

It certainly seemed like they were trying to recreate Run with Stop Crying Your Heart Out, it even got that X Factor slot.

I thought Naked and Love Letter deserved to be singles alongside Outta My Head.