The Art of Loving By Olivia Dean: A Love Letter In Pop Soul
The Art of Loving By Olivia Dean: A Love Letter In Pop Soul
The Art of Loving By Olivia Dean: A Love Letter In Pop Soul
Olivia Dean's The Art of Loving blends warm brass with intimate storytelling, read like a diary about loving on your own terms; subtle, thoughtful pop with literary depth.
When I pressed play on The Art of Loving, it felt like opening a well-worn novel: familiar in its vocabulary, yet different in tone; more assured, more intimate. As someone in pop-music fandom, I found this album by Olivia Dean to read like a diary filled with golden brass arrangements, lazy bossa-nova guitar lines, and the quiet confidence of someone learning how to love on her own terms.
Seeking a language for love
From the very beginning, Dean makes it clear that this album isn’t about grand declarations or fireworks. On tracks like “Nice to Each Other”, she offers a gentler manifesto: love doesn’t always need labels or expectations. The album is about dropping the games and relaxing into kindness, a message that pulses through almost every track.
Her inspiration behind the album is itself literary: Dean has spoken of being influenced by an art exhibition responding to bell hooks’s All About Love, and this philosophical grounding shows in the way she treats love not as a fairy-tale climax, but as a practice with failures, tenderness, and growth. Dean isn’t mocking love, nor is she idealising it: she’s quietly exploring its textures, hesitations, and everyday fragilities.
A new voice musically and emotionally
If her debut album felt like a young artist finding her footing, The Art of Loving is her coming into her own. According to one major music critic, this record trades the neo-soul clichés of her earlier work for a softer, 1970s Los Angeles-influenced pop/soft rock aesthetic.
There’s a shimmering ease to the instrumentation: breezy guitars, warm electric pianos, gentle brass, subtle strings. At times it feels like a Laurel Canyon afternoon, at others like a smoky jazz club in the early hours of dawn. One refrain across reviews has been how well this mellow, lush production suits Dean’s “understated” and “affectation-free” voice.
Yet the album doesn’t shy away from emotional complexity. Some songs glow with optimism and flirtatious hope, and others dwell in doubt, heartbreak or self-reflection. That oscillation grants the record a maturity often missing from mainstream pop.
Highlights and hesitations
Among the many tracks, a few stand out:
- “Man I Need” is glossy and upbeat, with a joyous confidence. It feels like the soundtrack to new love, replete with fluttering butterflies and soft-focus memories.
- “So Easy (To Fall in Love)”, with bossa nova undercurrents and gentle backing vocals, captures the heady rush of attraction but undercuts it with a calm, almost grounding sense of inevitability.
- “Let Alone the One You Love” is a ballad that allows vulnerability to bloom; here, Dean emerges not as a pop star on auto-tune but as a soul singer telling truths.
- “I’ve Seen It” (the closer) is tender and reflective; an elegy to love in its many forms, not just romantic, but the kind that lingers in everyday moments: friendship, shared cups of coffee, and quiet glances on a bus.
That said, some might find the album’s aesthetic a little too safe, too polished. The retro-inspired production occasionally borders on self-conscious pastiche, especially in tracks like “Close Up” or “Baby Steps”. Sometimes I find myself wanting sharper edges, more risk, perhaps a hint of discomfort to balance the comfort.
In a world where love is too often commodified, consumed and discarded, Olivia Dean offers tenderness as a craft. She seems to ask: can we treat love the way we treat art or literature, as something to work on, to learn, to evolve?
As a lover of literature, this resonated deeply. The record feels like a modern poetic meditation: unflashy, understated, but able to hold weight. It doesn’t erupt in metaphors nor rely on grand gestures. Instead, it offers small, honest confessions and invites us to listen closely.
Moreover, as a listener across geographies, I appreciate how it reminds us that pop need not always scream to be heard. Sometimes the softest instruments, like a piano chord, a brushed snare, and a breathy vocal, are enough to harbour truth.
A quiet kind of hope
By the final notes of The Art of Loving, what lingers is a quiet glow. A sense that love in all its messy, contradictory glory might just be worth the trouble. Dean doesn’t promise perfection. She doesn’t persuade you of fairy-tale endings. Instead, she offers earnest company, a steady rhythm, and a gentle reminder: love can be soft, unshowy, and everyday.
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