In her new album, “The Art of Loving,” Olivia Dean analyzes everything to do with love, relationships and the — sometimes hard — dealings of emotions with others. And what to do when you realize those flowery concepts aren’t everything in life.
Dean released her sophomore album Sept. 26, which included three singles she’d already released in early August: “Nice To Each Other,” “Lady Lady” and “Man I Need.” The cover is a dreamy and blurry black-and-white photo of Dean, a broad juxtaposition to the cheery and jazzy feel of the album itself.
With the first song on the album, Dean sets the tone immediately, despite it being nothing more than a snippet, a whopping 40 seconds long.
Here, Dean sings with only a piano and chirping birds to keep her company, “It’s the art of loving / It wasn’t all for nothing, yeah, you taught me something.” With the reality of building relationships comes the revelation that everything is an experience that you can learn from.
Even if it hurt, even if it broke your heart, even if you thought it was love, ultimately, you learned something from it. So, having given something and gotten something in return, was it really all that bad?
The next two tracks are two of the singles preemptively released in August: “Nice To Each Other” and “Lady Lady.”
In “Nice To Each Other,” Dean outlines the way the lines of a relationship blur and mesh the more intimate they become. “Nice To Each Other” is the “situationship” anthem, but it flips the concept on its head. Instead of a sloppy end and messy feelings, Dean sings of an understanding between the two that they simply want to be “Nice To Each Other” no matter how things may fall apart.
She sings, “We could be nice to each other / Nice to each other / Wrong for each other / Right for each other.” This perfectly encapsulated the rushing train of thoughts when you’re in that kind of “casual” relationship, the sort of hazy daydream one floats through; we could be this and we could be that, but we won’t be.
“Lady Lady” is about love in the way all of the songs off this album are about love — in an unexpected way. In this song, Dean battles with a sort of self-love that is stirred when forced into change by the Universe, by God, by Allah or by whatever higher power you prefer. Dean doesn’t react in anger, but rather acceptance; “She’s always changing me without a word / And I was just, I was just getting used to her / Keeps rearranging me a little bit.” This song is about love in the most genuine way, how one can love themselves through the way they change.
Then Dean sings her most relatable song, tragically so. Even with her slightly dated style, an almost jazz tune that weaves through every song, with “Close Up,” she sings of the most modern issue of all: the dreaded situationship, the “casual” relationship and the stained hookup culture of Gen-Z.
With this song, Dean sings, “’Cause you don’t make it easy, now I won’t close up / I can’t tell if / you need me or want me all that much / Did I misread completely every single touch? / Do you even see me?” it’s another mind spiral that she takes along for, drawing out the winding ways someone’s mind races when you realize what you had.
Thankfully, she ends the song in the most satisfying way, slightly bittersweetly singing, “And now I’m all close up…It don’t look like love.”
For me, the standout track of this album, but one that I keep coming back to time and time again, is “So Easy (To Fall In Love).” With the easily swayable tempo and the head-bobable beats, it’s easy for Dean’s elegant singing to get lost in your mind. If you zero in on her voice, the lyrics are a sweet anthem dedicated to the lovers of our society. It’s an instant confidence booster and a sweet love song to the romantics.
Dean describes someone offering themselves up so entirely, explaining that it’s not hard to fall in love with them. She sings, “I’m the perfect mix of Saturday night and the rest of your life / Anyone with a heart would agree / It’s so easy / To fall in love with me.”
She describes the type of person I know very well, as I see her in the mirror. I see this person in the people I surround myself with, the friends I have and I enjoy offering up my free time to see. When I hang out with my friends, a fleeting thought is usually something along the lines of “why hasn’t anyone settled down with this lovely person?” It’s painful to watch such lovely people, such deserving people, not receive the love they need. Especially when they’ve made it so easy for me to love them.
As Dean sang, putting it better than I ever could, “Some people make it hard, with me, that isn’t the case.”
Fans never felt more seen by music in my entire life. Love isn’t a hard emotion by any means; it’s just one that needs consistent work and practice. It’s just like anything else in life, an intricate lacework of understanding, then re-understanding as it changes. But that doesn’t make it hard to once you find the right person who makes the constant work feel more like play.
In the next track, “Let Alone The One You Love,” we dive into the world of breakups with Dean. While previous tracks may have alluded to it, this one makes the concept of a breakup the whole thesis. Through the song, we’re given a glimpse into the relationship, shown how Dean wasn’t allowed to grow out of the confines of her partner, thus forcing her to break it off.
She makes it clear that this is not what she wants, but this is what must be done for both of them. At one point, Dean refers to the relationship as a hug that must end, despite the fact that she wants to keep clinging on.
Dean sings a realization many have had, a clarity that only comes once you’re out of the smoky blindness of the relationship, “And, if you knew me at all / You wouldn’t try to keep me small / Who would do that to a friend, let alone the one you love?”
“Man I Need” is the third and final song that was released before the album, one that listeners used as a means to fill the void while waiting for the new album. It’s bubbly, it’s upbeat and it’s got that unique feel that only Dean has; that interplay between upbeat tunes and introspective lyrics.
“Whatever the type of talk it is, come on then / I gotta know you’re meant to be the man I need / Talk to me, talk to me.” Despite the upbeat tone and the almost pop tone to the music, these words are desperate. Dean just wants to talk to this man, wants his attention, wants him to be what she needs him to be, so he can just be hers.
There is nothing more desperate than begging someone to mean something — anything at all — to you, when you clearly mean nothing to them. But here Dean is, begging, with a funky track to back her up.
If you ever need a song to lift you up after a breakup or following a failed “casual” relationship, “Baby Steps” is the song you need. The whole track is Dean coming to terms with the fact that there is no longer someone by her side, someone to relay her day to or someone to tell as her flights take off and land. And the whole track is Dean realizing that, maybe, that’s not such a bad thing.
In the outro, among her humming, Dean sings, “I won’t fall back / If I fall forwards / At least I have that.” Just because the relationship is over doesn’t mean her life is over. And there’s a comfort in finding yourself again, in finding that sometimes you’ve got to move in the right direction, but sometimes those moves are baby steps.
The final track is a song that wraps up what Dean had been singing about the whole album: love. “I’ve Seen It” is a dreamy, floaty, sort of aloof track that we dance through with Dean as she tells us in all the places she has seen it, seen love. She lists off schoolyards and subway rides and movies and books.
But, the line that really got me was when Dean sang, “My mum and dad, they got me hooked / The fairy tale, the search goes on and on / The more you look, the more you find / It’s all around you all the time.”
For me, while Dean sings, the only thing I can think about is the beginning monologue from “Love Actually,” when Hugh Grant is reminiscing on the Heathrow Airport and all the kinds of love that exist in that place, while glimpses of strangers in the airport flash across the screen.
There is something beautiful about being able to see love in everyone and everything. And I find it beautiful that people sing songs and write movies about that mentality in this society.
“The Art of Loving” is an album that talks about the highs and the lows of falling in love. Dean paints a loving picture that really captures the beautiful — and sometimes tragic — ways in which people fall in and out of love for those willing to give her album a listen.
