Chartbreaker: Olivia Dean Scored a Breakthrough Because She ‘Had a Crush’ and Wanted to Dance

“I privation to constitute thing that I tin creation to.” That’s what rising soul-pop creator Olivia Dean declared earlier this twelvemonth erstwhile she arrived astatine her East London signaling workplace for a league with British producer-songwriter Zach Nahome and songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., who had conscionable flown retired from the United States. Dean was reasoning astir her signifier show: she had spent a bully chunk of 2024 connected the roadworthy successful the U.K. and Europe and had much circuit dates booked for this outpouring and summer. She had been presenting the sumptuous songs from her 2023 debut Messy for increasing audiences but knew that her unrecorded amusement could usage much tempo.

“We started with the 6/8 groove,” Dean recalls contiguous of the workplace session. “I had a crush astatine the time. I was like, ‘Listen: speech to me!’ That archetypal joyousness erstwhile you archetypal fancy idiosyncratic — I conscionable wanted to transmission that essence into a song.”

The result, “Man I Need,” has quickened the gait of Dean’s career: the pillowy, gospel-inflected way gave the London autochthonal her archetypal Billboard Hot 100 deed with a No. 82 debut successful aboriginal September and has shuffled upward each week since, presently sitting astatine No. 25. The timing of the song’s detonation couldn’t person been amended for Dean: successful the days starring up to the Sept. 26 merchandise of her sophomore album, The Art of Loving, connected Island Records, “Man I Need” pushed to No. 9 connected the Billboard Global 200, No. 2 connected the Official U.K. Singles illustration and regularly appeared successful the apical 10 of the U.S. Spotify regular apical 50 chart.

“Every day, I’m being told a caller stat,” Dean says with a laugh. “I’ve ne'er been connected the charts before, and I’ve been putting retired euphony for rather a agelong time, truthful it’s a spot of a caller satellite for me.”

Indeed, the 26-year-old’s mainstream breakthrough has been preceded by a decennary of training: raised successful Highams Park successful North East London, Dean was accepted to the BRIT School astatine the property of 15, initially studying philharmonic theatre earlier switching her attraction to songwriting. Soon after, Emily Braham, a manager who was past moving with the U.K. drum’n’bass set Rudimental, had been invited to a BRIT School archetypal opus showcase and watched Dean execute for the archetypal time. “She walked onstage, and determination was thing instantly captivating astir her,” recalls Braham, who signed her successful 2019.

Rudimental happened to beryllium looking for a caller backing vocalist astir the aforesaid time, and Braham connected her with the group. Dean earned the spotlight arsenic the featured vocalist connected the group’s azygous “Adrenaline” the aforesaid twelvemonth and past self-released her archetypal EP, Ok Love You Bye. (She besides signed a woody with Island Records UK successful 2019; by 2023, she had besides joined the statement for U.S. representation.)

As she worked her mode toward a debut album, Dean’s solo euphony people gravitated towards elegant, jazzy neo-soul — a dependable that had go mainstream during her puerility acknowledgment to artists similar Amy Winehouse, Jill Scott and Angie Stone, but had been mostly retired of vogue by the aboriginal 2020s. “I’ve ne'er been idiosyncratic who has followed trends oregon made euphony due to the fact that of what other was fashionable astatine the time,” she says. “I similar aged music, I similar psyche music, I similar Motown. That’s what I wanted to make, and successful my mind, I’m successful my ain lane successful that way.”

Although Messy scored a apical 10 debut connected the Official U.K. Albums illustration upon its June 2023 merchandise and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (which recognizes British and Irish mu...