Heatseeker: Lea Michele, Cannonball

Lea Michele has had a horror year – rather shockingly going from Glee starlet to grieving girlfriend when her boyfriend and Glee co-star Cory Monteith overdosed in July.

As Michele was publicly attempting to rebuild her life while keeping up her punishing shooting schedule, she was also readying a solo music career – the first taste of which comes in the form of the epic, touching Cannonball.

While this track was written by Aussie pop genius Sia, there’s no doubt that fans and commentators alike will be reading lyrics such as, “I chose suffering and pain and the falling rain, I know, I gotta get out into the world again” and, “Now I will start living. Today, today I close the door” as some form of diary-entry affirmation.

Michele’s existing fanbase is obviously strong, and with the Glee cast having landed literally hundreds of tracks in the Billboard Charts over the past few years, it seems misleading to dub this a debut single. Michele will be performing the track on the finale of X Factor this Thursday, having debuted it on Ellen last week. The song hits commercial radio in Australia this week, and while Glee isn’t quite the phenomenon here that it is in the US, this track’s forward propulsion, Both Michele’s familiarity, and the unfortunate circumstances that cannot be divorced from this single, indicate that Cannonball will do big business, both here and Stateside.