Olivia Dean’s sophomore album, The Art of Loving, came out Sept. 26, and shockingly didn’t make as much noise as it should have. Over the course of the past five months, she has released three singles, “Nice To Each Other,” “Lady Lady,” and “Man I Need,” which have all blown up on TikTok. I thought they were all incredible. They landed so well and were so well laid out that it gave a preview of what the album would sound like, and I was not let down. For me, standouts from the album include “So Easy (To Fall In Love)” and “Baby Steps.”
I was first introduced to Olivia Dean earlier this year with her song “Dive,” and I was so confused as to why no one was talking about her. I kept wondering where she came from and why she wasn’t more well known. Dean’s jazzy voice mixed with very soul-like instrumentals makes her music incredibly unique. She currently has 35.5M monthly listeners on Spotify, and yet she’s still underrated.
Dean has gained a fanbase through a collaboration with UK hitmaker Sam Fender on “Rein Me In,” and is going on tour with Sabrina Carpenter starting late Oct. 2025. Carpenter has had experience blowing up as an opener after she joined Taylor Swift on “The Eras Tour,” so her bringing Dean on her second leg of the “Short n’ Sweet Tour” will hopefully bring Dean some more recognition.
The Guardian called The Art of Loving, “exceptionally well made but feels entirely natural; it’s mainstream commercial pop, but laudably devoid of obvious cliches.” This feels like the most accurate way to describe this album. It’s not a brand-new genre. Instead, it’s as if Dean pulled different parts from decades like the 70s and 80s, while also mixing genres like pop and soul. The album is astonishingly cohesive, in an era where it feels like artists are misinterpreting the word “cohesive” and making all their songs sound too similar and indistinguishable.
With songs about the first moments of having a crush, to feeling scared in a relationship, and eventually breaking up and mourning a past love, Dean brings us through a journey of loving, hence the title of the album. Exciting lyrical moments like “I don’t know where the switches are / Or where you keep the cutlery / And I’ll probably crash your stupid car / And make your life a misery” in “Nice To Each Other” and heartbreaking ones like “And you weren’t allowed / To come around and throw my heart about / To turn me on just to turn my down” in “Loud,” highlight the fears she had going into the relationship and how they flipped back on her as her own life became a misery when she eventually loses her love. The lyrics in this album don’t make you pull out a dictionary but are so relatable that you might just feel like you were punched.
I am banking on Olivia Dean becoming the next big pop star. She headlined North American shows over the summer, making a stop at Brooklyn Paramount, and is continuing to headline many shows next spring and summer in the UK and EU. Hopefully, the many shows she has coming up will help her break past a large listener count and gain a larger fanbase too.