Since the release of her critically-acclaimed debut album Messy in 2023, Olivia Dean’s star continues to glisten. The project was an intricately textured document of love, relationships and self-discovery - embracing familiar subject matter with refreshing and intimate approaches, both sonically and emotionally. And whether it’s a Mercury Prize and 3 BRIT Awards nominations or soundtracking the latest Bridget Jones’ film Mad About The Boy, a whole host of viral tracks or touring the world with her band in sold-out shows across the Globe later this year, the response to Olivia has made it clear that her uniquely vulnerable formula is both compelling and deeply necessary today.
“It’s been beautifully overwhelming in so many ways,” Dean smiles. “I did everything I ever wanted to do career-wise, I feel so satisfied and content and proud of myself.” Bucket list moments have been ticked off twice over, like her Jools Holland Hootenanny performance that took on a life of its own on social media and her childhood dream of graduating to Glastonbury’s iconic Pyramid Stage came true with a magical career-defi ning set. All that’s left now is Strictly Come Dancing (“please guys, give me a call!” she jokes).
It’s safe to say that her singular yet soulful concoction of open-hearted art has proved infectious, capturing the hearts of lover-people worldwide. Her musical voice is a nourishing, philosophically-tinged, offering on the beautiful chaos of life and connection - a study and in embrace all at once. And in this next phase, of adjusting to new normals of fame and dreaming new dreams for herself, Dean is zooming in even further on love in all its precious nuance. “It’s the one thing in life that we don’t have concrete facts or education on and we look to music and film and art and each other to help each other learn,” she says. “We’re trying to all piece our own little version of it - of how we’re supposed to do it - together. I’m obsessed with love, I’m fascinated by it. I’m a sucker for it!”
Her single ‘Nice To Each Other’ proves just how boundless that source of inspiration can be, literally fizzing with its own romantic possibilities. On it, she distills the tightrope feeling of getting to know someone new with her signature tactility: ‘don’t know where the switches are, or where you keep the cutlery.’ As the guitar strums hopefully and she hums featherlight harmonies over the dreamlike pop production, she lands happily at the simplest of conclusions, ‘oh we could be nice to, oh to each other.’
It’s a playfully self-assured new prism for Dean, sweetly naive and purposefully independent. “I can be quite traditional in my approach to love. But in the last year I’ve just been thinking about an alternative, in a place where I’ve been choosing myself. I want to be loved and love other people but right now in my life, I’m really just doing me and it feels really cool,” she says. “I think there’s a whole spectrum of how you can have relationships with people in your life and still make them really meaningful and honest. But that’s a new thing for me to be honest.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Dean admits to struggling with sincerity in her day-to-day life, often freezing under the pressure to say the exact right thing in the exact right way at the exact right time. And while her friends often joke about her ‘one gushy moment per year’ quota, fortunately for us, she’s determined to pour the rest of those feelings into her music; mastering the art of crafting the perfect moment in song where spoken words might fail. In the studio, she can strike the precise balance in the way she’s done faithfully since her emergence: rich in feeling, delicate in words and tender in melody.
“I’m really drawn to being vulnerable in music and really just laying it all out there. One song in particular that I’ve written, I had to sit with myself and go… is it necessary?” she laughs. But beyond her own personal catharsis, the idea of her songs taking on new lives as an emotional toolkit for others, figuring life out right alongside her, is at the heart of why she does what she does. “I think the answer is always that it is needed to share. Because there are super vulnerable songs that save my life when I’m feeling so lost. And if they didn’t exist, what would I do? So you must!”
