Why everyone (and their roommates) is listening to Olivia Dean

I once was told that to get a song out of your head, you take two deep breaths and count down from 20. 

I breathe in and breathe out as I begin to count down. 

This was what my night consisted of until 1 a.m., as I stared at the ceiling and had an internal loop of the phrase, “I make it so easy to fall in love,” with the most annoyingly catchy melody.

Olivia Dean’s songs serve as the perfect earworm — soulful and groovy. Her second album, “The Art of Loving,” was released on Sept. 26, but has blown up so quickly that I quite literally hear these songs everywhere. According to Spotify, she now has approximately 36.9 million monthly listeners. 

While sitting at my desk trying to study, I hear two different songs of hers simultaneously playing from the reels on my roommates’ phones as they sit on either side of me. Just this week, I stopped to talk to my guy friends who were working on their motorcycle in the parking lot of Hendricks Hall, and was shocked to hear Dean’s voice from their speaker. 

The cover of “The Art of Loving” feels like a visual echo of the album itself.  It’s a photo of herself — her body softly blurred while her face remains clear, wearing a content smile. There’s tension between the crisp lines and the hazy edges of the image that suggests freedom and fluidity. Though the image is black and white, there are shades of grey throughout — the same grey areas of love that Dean so often lingers in.

This album marries R&B and pop, giving us songs with different vibes and attitudes. Listeners are given flirty, drum-heavy songs like “Nice to Each Other” to songs like “So Easy (To Fall In Love),” with raw vocals that remind me of Olivia Newton-John’s 1978 song “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”

Dean was born in the London Borough of Haringey to an English father and Jamaican-Guyanese mother, who often shared their love for music with her, igniting a love of her own, she said in a video released on YouTube by Apple Music. 

“The Art of Loving” is short but impactful, containing 12 songs. Dean mentioned in an interview with Apple Music that her intention for the album was to portray the theme of “love in its different forms.” Her lyrics blend with the soft edges of a British accent, giving her songs a romantic feel, even though romance wasn’t her full intention.

She wanted to cultivate an album that was “real, fresh and honest” — one that encapsulates the human experience of love in all of its many dimensions. 

Apple Music included a brief description of her album, “The Art of Loving,” which quotes Dean saying, “I’ve always been fascinated with love. It’s the one thing that everyone is looking for in their life in some capacity, whether it be friendship, family, romantic, but it’s not something that we are taught. I wanted to take a deeper look at it. The craft of loving someone properly.” 

Here are some must-listen-to songs from her recent album: 

“I’ve Seen It” 

This song has become my new anthem. It perfectly describes something that feels indescribable; the way love is always abounding, growing, changing and fleeting. Love’s many forms are accounted for in the song, including its fragility and strength. 

The lyric, “And it makes me cry to think that I am able, to give it back, the way it gives to me,” speaks to the human capability of receiving and pouring out the love shared with us. It almost makes love seem endless — this never-ending cycle that can’t truly die, but is rather recycled and manifested into a love made new. 

In this song, love is in the strangers, lovers and friends she meets. Its invisible presence and impending feeling are found everywhere, as she sings, “the more you look, the more you’ll find it’s all around you all the time.”

“Something in Between”

This song’s steady beat mirrors Dean’s stubbornness to exist within the grey area of love. She questions whether it is selfish to ask for something between commitment and full independence: “I’m not leaving, just feel tightly squeezed in, love needs, breathing, I’m not his, I’m not hers, I’m not yours.” 

There’s this underlying longing for freedom from restricting labels and fear of commitment lining her lyrics. Beneath the fun melody and her assured plea for independence lies a flicker of uncertainty, a questioning of whether emotional detachment is truly sustainable or if the freedom she seeks actually can exist.  

“Nice to Each Other”

When I hear this song, I think of a car full of teenagers blasting it while flying down Pacific Highway in one of the summer months, when nothing feels heavy and everyone is tan. I imagine this song soundtracking the chaos of girls getting ready for a night out — clothes flying across the room, makeup brushes dusting cheeks and a dizzying mix of perfumes filling the air. 

Yet, beneath the fun-loving vibe, this song is secretly as deep as her others. She captures the universal longing for affection — for connection, for a shared moment with someone — even if it’s fleeting or imperfect, just two people choosing to be nice to each other. 

I believe Dean’s newest album did an amazing job at describing a concept as complex as love, in a way that speaks to people of all backgrounds and experiences.