Singer/songwriter, keyboardist, and producer Olivia Dean scored big with her 2023 debut Messy, a Top Ten hit in her native U.K. and a nominee for the 2023 Mercury Prize. Just before the release of her 2025 follow-up, The Art of Loving, she became the first woman since fellow BRIT School alum Adele to have three simultaneous Top Ten singles. The road was not without bumps. Dean had started work on songs for her second album in Los Angeles but found the material unsatisfying, so she returned home and rented a house in East London to write and record. The cozier and more familiar setting also enabled her to create The Art of Loving in one space with a smaller group of collaborators, making it less of a patchwork, aided most by Zach Nahome, producer or co-producer of every track. (Bastian Langebæk, Matt Hales, and Max Wolfgang constitute the returning cast.) Moved by artist Mickalene Thomas' exhibition All About Love, as well as the like-titled bell hooks book that inspired it, Dean thought more deeply about love as an ever-present aspect of life rather than a storybook concept. The first fruit was "Nice to Each Other," a breezy and strummy pop song, full of self-effacing humor, calling for her and her partner to live in the moment. It signified on multiple levels the release of a pressure valve, and was actually Dean's second Top Ten hit of the year, just after "Rein Me In," headlined by Sam Fender and featuring Dean as co-writer and duettist. The lightly galloping, gospel-inflected "Man I Need," an amiable request for her man to open up and let her into his life, completed Dean's Top Ten trifecta. "So Easy (To Fall in Love)," a charming number co-written by hitmaker Amy Allen, became Dean's fourth Top Ten single with a touch of early-'60s Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Most of what remains on The Art of Loving has as much easygoing appeal. That goes for moments when Dean confronts her man to ask for clarity (the fine retro-soul ballad "Close Up"), informs him that he's slipping ("Let Alone the One You Love," with loose, rustic, and elegant qualities akin to prime Delaney & Bonnie), and ingeniously relates the before-and-after effects of a split (the bobbing "Baby Steps"). "I've Seen It," the intimate acoustic finale, articulates Dean's philosophical outlook on love in stirring fashion. This is a couple cuts above her promising debut.

The Art of Loving    
Nice To Each Other    
Lady Lady    
Close Up    
So Easy (To Fall In Love)    
Let Alone The One You Love    
The Man I Need    
Something Inbetween    
Loud    
Baby Steps    
A Couple Minutes    
I’ve Seen It