The Art of Loving

Review of The Art of Loving by Olivia Dean

Olivia Dean is another golden example of female pop-soul excellence in the 2020s. The current wave of fem-empowering pop-soul artists, with Raye and Olivia Dean at the front, has found a fanbase and a very much deserved meteoric rise to stardom.

Olivia Dean’s second studio album The Art of Loving arrived last September, trailing a sequence of incredible singles. I’d stumbled upon her debut Messy earlier and found it enjoyable but missing bite. Not even half a year later, she bit back with “Nice to Each Other”, followed by “Lady Lady” and “Man I Need”. By the third single I was sold enough to stay up for the midnight release.

“Something lost and something gained
In the art of loving”

So what does this album feel and sound like? Imagine Raye without the theatrics. I’m not saying she loses Raye’s vocal capabilities, because they’re both incredibly skilled vocalists. Where Raye is all about the over-the-top vocals, instrumentals and, most importantly, endings, Olivia Dean has gone for soothing and sweet, which fits her whole image and feel.

Fittingly, the intro track “The Art of Loving” could come straight out of Alan Menken’s Disney catalogue. Birds chirping, a harp strumming, and a string section that could have been used more often across the rest of the album. I like how Olivia Dean used the first track as an actual intro, not something you replay but something that works as a book cover in sound.

The first “actual” track “Nice to Each Other”, coincidentally also the lead single released almost four months prior to The Art of Loving, has way more to it than I thought on first listen. It’s filled with all sorts of subtle textures, from wind howling and synth laser effects to gospel-like backing vocals. Olivia Dean uses these to perfection, giving the song moments of silence by stripping the effects back to just guitar and piano, then adding the synths back in when the song needs to feel full again. You notice this best when the first part of the song kicks into “don’t know where the switches are”, where you can clearly hear the synths fill your ears with warmth and sound without it becoming overwhelming.

“Lady Lady is a song about the universe, mother nature, and accepting and trusting in the plan that she has for you. It’s about the feeling of having to change just as you’re getting used to a version of yourself.” – Olivia Dean

“Lady Lady”, another of the singles, is a nice contrast from electronic to more percussion-based, with conga drums and the love of my life, a shaker. Man, do I love shakers. There are still other sound effects in the background later in the song, with more backing gospel, which is a big recurring theme in Olivia Dean’s music. Almost all of it is built on multiple different tempo drums, with the most catchy and prominent being the buzz roll mixed in with the deep bass and shaker. A song inspired by change in life, coming right after a song that sounds completely different, is successfully executed by the lady lady Dean.

The main ingredient of Olivia Dean’s music is her smile. Even on songs without a video clip, like “Close Up”, you can picture it. It’s infectious. The lyrics on The Art of Loving aren’t anything original, but she creates such an immense amount of warmth with her vocal performance that the album becomes a place to feel safe.

Talking about safe, “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” was built for the radio. It checks all the boxes. Love lyrics, yes. A catchy chorus, yes. And most importantly, not too complicated instrumentally. It doesn’t scare people away, and it makes sense that it’s one of the biggest commercial successes for Olivia Dean. It’s on the cliché and bland side of her discography, but again, her smile and personality carry her to stardom.

Olivia Dean does break the overall warmth of love with a sadder song, “Let Alone the One You Love”. It gives the album title more meaning, with “the art of loving” being not only happiness or fun but also fighting, patience and sadness, all a part of it. A very catchy and original chorus, “Who would do that to a friend, let alone the one you love”, carries a lot of weight. You can hear the betrayal Dean feels singing this. It’s like she first gave you a place to feel safe, building a warm and happy space, and only then opened up to talk about more sensitive topics.

“‘Man I Need” is a song about knowing how you deserve to be loved and not being afraid to ask for it. It’s forward, sexy, fun! It’s made for dancing!” – Olivia Dean in Rolling Stone

I’m going to sound like a hypocrite, but my argument for “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” being safe should also apply to “Man I Need”. The third single released by Olivia Dean does sound perfectly created for radio, but something in this song makes it special. What I first noticed was the perfect flow of the vocals. No other track on the album comes close. After just one listen it sticks in your head. I caught myself singing it during work without even noticing. It’s effortlessly catchy.

Listening closer, it shows some simple but effective pop-soul brilliance. Take the switch into the first chorus. The drum machine switches to slightly faster hits, making it feel like the song is speeding up when in fact it stays in standard four-four time. As Bruce Lee put it, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Ironically, “Something Inbetween” is a perfect description of the track itself. It’s the first time a song doesn’t fit with the rest of the album for me, and has very little to say, especially sitting between two tracks that are easily the best of the album.

Is it just me, or did Olivia Dean showcase her ability to create a perfect James Bond track on “Loud”? I love how well this contrasts with her more radio-friendly songs, especially “Man I Need”. Where the previous song had big sounds filled with huge synths, guitar riffs and pianos, “Loud” is built on fingerpicking an acoustic guitar, contrasted with a chorus that adds a grandiose, sweeping string section. The song goes literally silent on the lyric “silence is so loud”, a craft choice so simple it’s almost underappreciated. It just doesn’t feel like an Olivia Dean song we’ve heard before. I hope she follows Raye’s example and does a show with a live orchestra, because she would break records.

So far I’m really impressed with Olivia Dean. She went from a decent album in Messy to creating songs like “Loud”. However, I do think there’s room for improvement here. This is clearest to me on the three end-stretch songs “Baby Steps”, “A Couple Minutes” and “I’ve Seen It”, with all three sounding like lesser copies of previous tracks. It’s a damper on an album that had been hit after hit. If the album had ended on something more grandiose or more fragile than “I’ve Seen It”, it would have been a classic.

To end on a more positive note, Olivia Dean is a rarity. She sounds like she’s having fun while she sings, her vocals warm, her energy on stage already on par with a superstar. The Art of Loving was worth every minute of lost sleep, even if it stopped just short of being a classic. I hope Olivia keeps growing into a centrepiece of pop-soul, because the music industry could use more of her smile.

Featured Tracks

Man I Need

Nice To Each Other

So Easy (To Fall In Love)