The Art of Loving Olivia Dean
Written by Natasha Santana
What’s your favorite type of wine? What’s your favorite tea? Which type of blanket do you hide under on a chilly fall afternoon? Whatever the answer is, Olivia Dean will give it to you. Dean is a UK singer and songwriter who has been on tour, opening for Sabrina Carpenter, over the past few months. Olivia Dean has released singles like ‘Lady Lady’ and ‘Dive’, which have accumulated over 2.4 million streams. Her songs are best known for the loving nature that comes with discovering oneself and uplifting women all over the world.
In her latest album release, ‘The Art of Loving,’ Dean provides you with everything needed to create a cozy abode in your ears. Olivia Dean could be described as an ode to what it’s like to approach life through a lens of sensitivity, gentle sensuality, and pure joy of living the feminine experience. These songs on this album have provided great comfort for young women all over the world, bringing a sense of ease to what being a woman can look like in love, in pain, and in reflection.
Dean has previously stated that much of this album was produced and created in this makeshift ‘love’ shack. She surrounded herself with physical things that embody love from her perspective. More so, cultivating an environment where love can live and be nurtured for the rest of us to hear. Boy, does she do love the greatest service. You can hear intention with every word she sings in her silk voice. There was much care in the creation of this album because when you listen to the track, ‘The Art of Loving, ’ it sounds like Olivia is prepping the listener for all these hard truths.
There are plenty of songs about love and how humans experience it. Frequently, it is a picture painted of the painful sorrow felt when love is gone or broken. While this still holds true for Olivia’s new album, it isn’t the type of pain where you break dishes or swallow your chest whole. It is the pain of realizing that one experiences love in a fathomless way that can not be measured. We hear this potently in ‘So Easy (to fall in love’ and how Dean has made it so easy for someone to love her, and yet it needs to be declared. How much of love is truly tug and pull? Even when you haven’t been tugging or fighting for it at all.
It is quite refreshing to hear someone sing about how love should not be a game or battle of figuring one another out; love is an overwhelming, magical thing that can pierce through your own identity, thoughts, and even perception of what love you can give. Specifically in ‘Ive Seen it’, I must emphasize these two stanzas:
I've seen it grow old and forget
Until it's just a silhouette
'Til someone picks it up and sends it on
I've seen the films, I've read the books
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
Catches your eye, you blink and then it's gone
Brings out the worst, brings out the best
I know it's somewhere in my chest
I guess it's been inside me all along
As you get older and become more yourself as a woman, you start to realize that there is no greater love than the one that comes from you. That the love you feel, learn, and grow into is the love that you start to spy on everywhere you go because you’re there. Dean makes sure to tell this not only with her sentimental voice but with the harmonies and sounds that pull on you every which way.
It is even more heartbreaking when you realize this transition of realizing that this isn’t about loving yourself, but more about the love that comes from you and someone abusing that. One of my favorite songs that Dean encapsulates like a swaddled baby is ‘Loud.’ This song has been replayed so many times that it is worrisome. Not only does Dean do this whine in her belt that makes you want to seek revenge on whoever hurt her, but it's the stripped-back guitar. The acoustic sounds as if it is spiraling as Dean lets out this recognition that this person who had control was simply playing puppets. We often hear people say that someone hurt them, but it’s striking and haunting when someone realizes they were never allowed to acknowledge that hurt. In some ways, that kind of pain cuts deeper. To hear her voice wrestle with the thought, I would have never let this happen. How did it? And then the violin enters right at that moment. It’s devastating.
This album has created a significant surge in Dean’s fanbase because it was made for the yearners, lovers, and dreamers of this world. More importantly, it notices the women who want to love as they ebb and flow through life. In ‘Baby Steps, ’ Olivia talks about the process of uncovering and letting love into every inch of your life. How can one inch of her life not be grand and beautiful? This is a common theme for many young women, including myself today, who are understanding their lives as grown women with much to love. It is okay to want to romanticize the confusion that is leaving and growing.
A song that can help a girl out, seriously, is ‘Somewhere Inbetween.’ To want to not mean something to someone, and to not want to confront what you can look like in love. That you don’t want to leave, persay but you just want something. That you could be somewhere in between something with someone. Whatever you choose, and whoever you choose, will remain as long as you choose a space of growth. Olivia is simply a genius in terms of finding the right words that a confused, big, and grown-up woman can understand. To not be everything but mean one thing to something in a very confusing time.
Overall, there is an abundance of thoughts that one can give on this album. I could write a report on the importance of this album for women right now, but I will leave it for the girls to experience. There is nothing more calming than listening to Olivia Dean while you get ready to go out. I haven’t felt so understood until I heard my thoughts sung by this gorgeous woman. The next time you have your favorite wine out, crank this album out. You won’t regret it.
