Almost by stealth, British singer-songwriter Olivia Dean has spent the last few months laying the groundwork for what’s turning out to be one of the most anticipated pop albums of the year.
The Art Of Loving - Dean’s second long-player - is released tomorrow (26 September), but the lead-up to the new record has seen her release a string of singles, each helping to build more momentum than the last.
Dean’s 2025 kicked off with an appearance on the Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy soundtrack (It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be), but things went to another level for her when she released Nice to Each Other, The Art Of Loving’s first single, in May 2025. A Top 10 hit in the UK, it also made waves in streaming charts.
An appearance on Sam Fender’s Rein Me In swiftly followed, and then came Lady Lady, a song that hinted at a growing songwriting majority. The biggest breakthrough, though, has been Man I Need, another UK hit and Dean’s first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
A throwback slice of unashamed pop - there are hints of Madonna’s 1989 hit, Cherish - Man I Need continues to sit pretty in Spotify’s Global Top 50, but in an interview with Music Week, Dean admits that she initially had her doubts about it.
“I think it was a song that I wasn’t sure about at first,” she says. “It felt different, you know, uptempo and sexy, but I love it.”
In fact, having lived with the album for a while - and possibly in light of Man I Need’s success - Dean says it’s become one of her personal favourites. “I love that song, I love the way it makes me feel,” she confirms.
Dean certainly seemed to be enjoying herself when she performed the song as part of a recent Spotify Live Room Session, and she also demonstrated her impeccable taste by choosing to cover The Dress, a highlight from Dijon’s 2021 album, Absolutely.
Elsewhere in the interview, we learn that The Art Of Loving was recorded over eight weeks in a house in Hackney, East London, where Dean and her team (she worked with not only previous collaborators producer Matt Hales and co-writers Max Wolfgang and Bastian Langebæk, but also songwriters of the moment Amy Allen and Tobias Jesso Jr) set up a ‘home from home’ studio.
“There’s a degree of comfort when you’re making a cup of tea in your own mug,” says Dean. “I wanted it to feel like a second home. Music had never been made there before. I was really interested in that, you know, my own space that didn’t have anyone else’s impression on it.”
While Dean is certainly ambitious - she admits that she’d love to headline Glastonbury one day - she’s wary of reading too much into her current commercial success.
“I mean, it’s kind of crazy; honestly, I’m not somebody who looks at the charts too much,” she says. “It’s obviously amazing, but it is a bit of a dangerous game for me personally to have that as a barometer of success. But it feels great.”
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