Olivia Dean in the Mix
Olivia Dean’s second album, “The Art of Loving,” emerged from a moment of pressure and doubt as she tried to follow her Mercury Prize-nominated debut, “Messy,” and prove she could match its success. Initially, she flew to Los Angeles to work in “big, sexy” studios with new producers, but the environment felt wrong for the vulnerable, heartbreak-rooted “case study on love” she wanted to make, leaving her too anxious to hear herself clearly.
To reclaim control, Dean rented an airy house in East London near where she grew up, moved her own piano in, and turned it into a makeshift studio for eight weeks with longtime collaborators. Executive producer Zach Nahome describes the house itself as a key production tool, where late-night, wine-fueled conversations fed directly into the songs that became the 12-track album.
“The Art of Loving,” influenced in part by bell hooks’s “All About Love: New Visions,” is described as an intimate, polished meditation on romantic, platonic and self-love. Dean deliberately leaned into a poppier sound than on “Messy,” saying she wanted this record to truly “reach people,” even as it held onto her emotional directness.
Commercially, the album has already reshaped her career: it went to No. 1 on the British album chart, while lead single “Man I Need” also hit No. 1, marking the biggest opening week for a British female artist since Adele’s “30” in 2021. She is set to support Sabrina Carpenter for five nights at Madison Square Garden and headline six sold-out nights at London’s O2 arena, while also becoming the face of Burberry’s Her fragrance line.
Online, Dean’s songs have become a kind of unofficial soundtrack on TikTok and Instagram, particularly hooky lines like “I’m the perfect mix of / Saturday night and the rest / of your life.” At the same time, the intensified attention has unnerved her; she recently left TikTok after feeling like she was constantly overhearing people’s conversations about her fame and music.
Dean says the sudden spotlight feels surreal because she spent years feeling “on the outside of it all.” Since 19, she has released music that fuses neo-soul, R&B, pop-soul, Motown, jazz and even steel drums, prioritizing feeling over genre, a breadth that made it harder for the industry to categorize and initially back her.
Her manager, Emily Braham, notes that executives often pigeonholed Dean as a “mixed-race girl with a guitar” and assumed she should sound like Corinne Bailey Rae. Dean has resisted that narrowing, insisting on doing things her own way, from her experiments in sound to the impromptu van gigs she played in 2020 when the pandemic wiped out her first summer of festival bookings.
Dean links her determination and expansive musical taste to her upbringing in a politically and culturally engaged household. Her mother, of Jamaican and Guyanese heritage, became the first Black woman to serve as deputy leader of Britain’s Women’s Equality Party, while at home she played story-driven records by Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott and Angie Stone, and Dean’s British father added Al Green, Steely Dan and reggae to the mix.
Deciding at age 8 that she wanted to sing, Dean joined a gospel choir and took lessons before winning a place at the BRIT School, whose alumni include Adele and Amy Winehouse. Former teacher Conor Doherty recalls her as already highly disciplined; she moved from the musical theater track into music with a strong sense of stagecraft and an ability to “work an audience.”
Onstage now, Dean performs with a poised, Supremes-like elegance, backed by a live band, in slinky gowns with hair blowing in fan-created breeze. She is acutely aware of the power of performance: audiences belt back lines like “I don’t want a boyfriend!” from her song “Nice to Each Other,” turning her lyrics into communal affirmations.
Dean says the process of making “The Art of Loving”—leaning fully into vulnerability, then watching listeners genuinely understand and connect with the songs—has changed her sense of self. Where she once felt conflicted about “being a mix of things,” both in terms of race and genre, she now embraces that multiplicity, laughing that she is “the best of so many different things.”
