“We started with the drum beat and I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do something kind of like The Way You Make Me Feel.' And I sat at the Wurly and I went, ‘duh-du-duhh’”: Olivia Dean on writing Man I Need and the Michael Jackson hit that helped to inspire it

Olivia Dean’s Man I Need has turned out to be the post-summer feelgood pick-me-up that the world needed, landing in Top 10s around the globe.

Now, in an interview with And The Writer Is…, the UK singer-songwriter has been discussing how the song was created, and the intention behind it.

“We did a week in the studio in the house,” begins Dean. “It was me, Zach [Nahome, writer-producer], and Tobias [Jesso Jr, songwriter to the stars].”

Remembering the specific moment when Man I Need was born, Dean says: “I came in that day and there was a lot of energy in the room. We'd all never worked together before and it was all just a bit like crazy. And I knew that we were gonna make something fun. And I was like, ‘Guys, let's make something really fun. I want to make something I can dance to. I want to make something that when I perform live, it's just gonna be like a Tangfastic [fizzy Haribo sweet], like just woo.’”

With her heart set on writing an upbeat pop banger, Dean’s thoughts turned to one of the finest of them all.

“I think we started with the drum beat and I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do something kind of like Michael [Jackson], The Way You Make Me Feel-esque,’” she confirms. “And I sat at the Wurly [electric piano] and I went ‘duh-du-duhh’ [sings Man I Need’s opening chords] and then we kind of just, like, wrote it.”

Olivia Dean - Man I Need - YouTube

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The song certainly has a lightness that suggests that the writing process was smooth, and Dean quickly became convinced that, like all the best pop hits, it would stand up to repeated listens.

“By the end of the week we had, like, three ideas, and that one [what ended up being Man I Need] I just remember driving to and from the studio at the weekend and I just played

it again and again and again and again and again and again. And I was like, ‘OK, well if I can listen to this again and again I think other people might want to.”

Man I Need is taken from The Art of Loving, Dean’s second album, but while Zach Nahome worked across the whole record, Man I Need turned out to the only song that Tobias Jesso Jr - who’s collaborated with everyone from Harry Styles, Adele and Dua Lipa to Bon Iver, Dijon and Justin Bieber - is credited on. He certainly left his mark, however.

“I've never worked with somebody in the way in which he works,” says Dean. “He just has

so many ideas and he's always on his feet in the room. He's always sort of standing and giving so much energy, and I think that kind of pushed me to give it back. And we have it on film - the moment we were kind of writing kind of the hook part, and it's like we're going back and forth and he's like punctuating the rhythm and I'm like ‘what about this?’ and it was just so exciting. He's so exciting to work with. There’s nothing passive about him.”