Rising British singer Olivia Dean is feeling it all after going viral with her latest single, “Man I Need.”
The track from her new album, The Art of Loving, has topped the charts in numerous countries, including Ireland, Belgium, and New Zealand. It also recently peaked at No. 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
“I’m feeling all the feelings, I’m feeling very loved and just received and understood. I’m very grateful,” the 26-year-old said Friday of her newfound fame while appearing on Today.
Discussing the intention behind her new record, Dean said that it was inspired by a recent Los Angeles art exhibit she’d seen about Bell Hooks’s 1999 book All About Love.
“It was kind of the only text I’ve read talking about love as less of like a fantasy thing, and more of something that you can practice, like a skill you could get really good at, a craft you could just get better at,” she said of Hooks’s book.
“And I thought, ‘I’d like to do that. I’d like to be more loving and love people better and myself better, and I think this album was just me exploring that.”
Of the physical location where the album was written, Dean said she and her team worked in a studio in London.
“We sort of rented this house for eight weeks and called it ‘The House of Loving,’” she recounted, “and I lived there, and I was like, whatever I made in that time that was the album and that was what I found out about love.”
While the artist — whose sultry voice recalls the late Amy Winehouse — has been on the music scene for a few years, releasing her debut album, Messy, in 2023, she’s only now gaining widespread recognition with “Man I Love.”
The songs “Nice to Each Other” and “Lady Lady” off the same album have also become listener favorites.
“At a time when the pop charts are a little saturated with women (quite understandably) calling out toxic masculinity, there’s a lovely optimism in Dean’s sunny olive branch of a track,” The Independent’s Helen Brown wrote of “Man I Love” in a five-star review of her album, The Art of Loving.
“I loved the way this record de-complicates and de-escalates romance, particularly at a time when the climate feels so combative,” Brown added. “Dean doesn’t downplay the challenges or the risks of heartbreak. But she offers sussed-up hope with a playful generosity of spirit. Deep’n’breezy does it.”
