OLIVIA DEAN - The Art Of Loving

From the legendary northern soul era, through the sophistication of Simply Red and Dexys Midnight Runners, from the maturity of Sade and Swing Out Sister towards the Nineties of Gabrielle and Des'ree, all the way to the global success of Adele, Amy Winehouse and Duffy, soul has found, decade after decade in the UK, artists capable of carrying forward and refreshing its forms and messages, becoming - far more than most other genres - one of the load-bearing pillars of British popular music.

After a few years of slight decline and drift toward other shores, even the 2020s haven't failed to find their own interpreters, and they do so through a voice endowed with rare grace and gentleness. Born in '99, already with one album behind her that two years ago established her as a promising interpreter of classic soul in the mould of the Sixties, with "The Art Of Loving" Olivia Dean takes a long-awaited step forward, giving her own personal stamp to a convincing combination of pop romance and more sophisticated stirrings of the soul. Exactly what was needed for the young Londoner to export her ars amandi beyond the borders of the UK and secure international success.

Spiritual heir to the early Corinne Bailey Rae and Lianne La Havas, with whom she shares a hazy expressive warmth and the use of folk elements, Dean packs into lean, trim songs a voice that needs no vocal excess or heavy-handed arrangements to let all its feeling shine through. She proves a precise performer, equally at ease in moments of deeper reflection (the understated smooth feel of "Lady Lady", the lead single) and in those where emotion gives way to a delicate lightness.

"Man I Need", the hit that broadened her audience worldwide, presents a songwriter who knows how to play with rhythm, shaping pop constructs (even synthetic ones, not far from early Jessie Ware) and bending them to the courteous firmness of a voice that dominates everything, whether it's a desire for genuine communication or the lingering traces of a freedom hard-won and hard-kept (the light 2-step touches of "Something Inbetween").

Dean's love stays solid at the tip of a guitar (the bossa nova hints that open "So Easy"), flirts with a fuller sound (the subtly funky choral feel of "Baby Steps"), and hums lullabies to itself, even when everything seems over ("A Couple Minutes").

After all, the art of loving knows no time or context: it can play out just as well in the past as in the present, so long as whoever handles it knows how to navigate its different codes, read its nuances and blend them in their own way. She may not yet have the authority to publish the definitive manual, but as such an elegant spokesperson for the new British soul, Olivia Dean is already writing some compelling pages.

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17/11/2025