FEATURE:
Over the Hardest Part…
IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Dean captured at GLAMOUR’s Women of the Year awards in October 2023/PHOTO CREDIT: Hollie Molloy
when we are all predicting who will make waves next year. I am trying to keep a track of all the lists that are being published naming artists primed to succeed in 2024. I am going to do as many playlists as possible based on them. Not that she is brand-new, though it is clear that Olivia Dean is among the artists that are going to shape music next year. She has already been named BBC Introducing's Artist of the Year. I am going to come to an interview with her around that, in addition to a couple of others from this year. I will also bring in a review for her debut album, Messy. That was nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize. I think there is a confidence within Olivia Dean where she knows she will headline big festivals one day. If smaller ones in this country are booking women as headliners, it is clear that most bigger festivals will not. Or at the very least it is going to be majorly imbalance. Dean seems like a natural headliner. Someone whose natural ability and charm is enough to win any crowd. I am keen to update my previous feature and include interviews and insight that was not available then. I want to start out with the BBC talking with Olivia Dean in reaction to her being named BBC Introducing's Artist of the Year:
“Success has kept her busy - as well as playing Glastonbury she's also performed on Later... With Jools Holland (which she described as "a dream") and covered Beyoncé in the Radio 1 Live Lounge (she "loves a challenge").
But it's also brought up feelings of imposter syndrome and wrestling with her identity again - such as feeling pigeon-holed when her single UFO was added to R&B playlists.
"There's no rhythm, there's no drums in it, so how can it be rhythm and blues?" she says.
"If I looked differently, I don't think it would have been put in that category.
"It's very confusing, especially for young women in the industry. You feel like everybody else knows - or they think they know - better."
Olivia tells Newsbeat her experiences have taught her that being in control of her own sound is a priority.
"I don't have a problem with people thinking I'm difficult," she says.
"I just don't like being told what to do."
That doesn't mean she won't accept criticism - as long as it's constructive - "but at the end of the day, I need to do what's going to be best for me because it's my name on the tin.
"In many years' time, my grandkids are going to be listening to what I thought about the world and love and how I was feeling at the time."
Although her music takes her all over the world, Olivia says she's "London through and through"
Love, and the loss of it, is a huge inspiration for Olivia. Her album Messy, featuring singles including The Hardest Part and Dive, maps falling in love again after a break-up.
But the seeds of her songs also come from some unexpected places.
The clue's in the name for Ladies Room, which came out of an overheard conversation in a south London pub toilet.
Olivia recalls a woman standing at the sinks dishing out the advice: "Don't date a man 20 years older than you!".
The boyfriend wanted to go home but this girl wanted to party.
"The ladies bathroom can be a really crazy place," Olivia says. "Stories being shared, lip gloss thrown everywhere, gossip, drama."
And see if you can spot the inspiration for this lyric: "If you can't see my mirrors, then I can't see you".
Sound familiar?
"That is one of my favourite lyrics I've ever written," Olivia laughs. "And it is inspired by stickers on the back of trucks.
"That's what I believe so strongly about music, it's about the small things.
"There's little specific details that we all see every day. They carry so much meaning, you just have to look for it and almost inject it into them."
Olivia Dean says she's manifested her milestones this year
Olivia's realised she works best in her comfort zone rather than being thrown in at the deep end.
She says she likes to chill with her team for a couple of hours before work, having long chats over cups of tea - a different approach to other artists who "work like athletes" but one that fits for Olivia.
"And then out of that, the seed of inspiration comes," she says. "What the song's going to be about, always it'll come in that conversation”.
I will end with a review of Messy. One of this year’s best debut albums, it quite rightly was nominated for a Mercury and, in the process, has taken Olivia Dean to new heights. She will go on to massive stages and reach new heights very soon. She has some big European dates booked for next year. I feel it will not be too long until Dean tours through the U.S. I can see her music making a real impact there. I want to come to an interview from May. About a month before her album arrived, Olivia Dean spoke with The Independent about her ambitions and new music:
“I’m having the craziest week of my life!” declares soul-pop sensation Olivia Dean. She is currently backstage at the Roundhouse, where she is due to perform in a few hours. Her “crazy week” consists of what she calls a hometown “gig sandwich” – a headline show at Camden’s KOKO (which sold out in under a minute), a support slot for London rapper Loyle Carner at Wembley and tonight at the Roundhouse. It’s also her 24th birthday. Reclining on a red leather sofa, hair tied back in a messy bun and inhaling from her vocal steamer, she looks unfazed. You wouldn’t guess she was about to perform the biggest show of her life. Dean exudes such calm confidence, you feel like you could catch it.
Clearly, there is something infectious about her, or at least her music, because for tonight’s 3,000-capacity show, there are 10,000 people on the waitlist. Not only has the singer achieved early success with her storytelling songs, (sold-out tours, songs across Radio 1 and a secret set at Glastonbury), but she’s also made a name for herself in fashion, having recently become a brand ambassador for Chanel.
Music remains the priority though, especially playing live. “I love singing to people so much, it just brings me so much joy,” she smiles. Dean compares going on tour to making pancakes. “The first one is probably a bit dodgy – still tastes nice – but you haven’t really nailed it,” she laughs. “I love when stuff goes wrong – those have been my favourite shows, it’s the messiness that makes it fun.”
It’s these imperfections that have inspired her highly anticipated debut album, Messy, due on 30 June. Not that Dean needs an album; she has already amassed a cult-like fanbase, all of whom sing back every word of her candid lyrics at the Roundhouse this evening. “The thing that most people tell me is, ‘You’ve got me through a break-up’,” Dean explains when I ask what gives her such a strong affinity with fans. “Everyone has that big [split] in their life that messes you up and you kind of lose that perspective of yourself. It can feel like a really lonely experience and I guess I was just documenting that.” Later that evening, she tells the crowd, “I don’t really believe in this idea of the ‘other half’. You’re a whole person and you don’t need somebody else to complete you.”
Her 12-track record navigates falling out of love and back into it, with comforting, conversational lyrics all articulated in the warm, glowy tones of her full-bodied voice. Tracks directly address their subjects with frank honesty in a nod to her musical idols: Amy Winehouse, Lauryn Hill and Carole King. While the album features the relatable relationship ruminations her fans have come to expect, (you’ll recognise 2020 break-up anthem “The Hardest Part” and the newer and seductive “Danger”), elsewhere Dean braves introspection.
She explores identity in “Carmen”, which was named after her grandmother, whom Messy is dedicated to. “You transplanted a family tree, and a part of it grew into me,” Dean sings, referencing her grandmother’s move to London from Guyana as part of the Windrush generation. “I just feel so grateful to her for being so brave, because it’s enabled me to live my dream,” says Dean. She recalls visiting the Life Between Islands exhibition at the Tate Modern, which showcased Caribbean-British art. The work made her feel seen and connected to herself. “I feel so British and so East London – but I also feel that there’s this other thing that’s kind of missing,” she says. “The exhibition was just crazy to me. It was celebrating the beauty, crossover and the imperfections.” And so Dean arrived at the album’s title Messy, which ended up guiding her attitude towards songwriting this time around. “There’s no rules,” she says.
Dean has routinely come up against expectations in the industry – expectations of what her music should sound like because of what she looks like. On the album’s otherworldly opening track “UFO”, Dean decided to explore an Imogen Heap sound. Yet frustratingly, she discovered the song had been added to an R&B playlist. “In what world? What rhythm and blues are you hearing? If I was white, that would just never happen,” she says. “Sometimes with the way that I look, I feel like, is my music supposed to be urban or am I supposed to make a certain kind of thing?” With two fingers up to those stereotypes, Dean simply writes what she feels. “I made Messy quite selfishly, to be honest,” she admits. “I was just like, ‘This is what I would want to listen to’”.
I am going to bring things up to date. The purpose of this feature, apart from highlighting Olivia Dean, is to see what she has said about her album and get more of an insight into her creative process. Before moving on, I want to bring in an interview from Sound of Brit. It is fascinating reading how she approached the album and the fact that, in spite of the songs flowing naturally, it was hard to write at times – being in that headspace where she could breathe and feel inspired:
“Sound of Brit : We really enjoyed Messy, your first album, and go a lot of feedback on our review on out website. Can you tell us about the cover?
Olivia Dean: Hmm… Good or bad?? Ahah. In fact, early on in the process of finding the good artwork, we made a big shoot, completely different, and it was going to be a really conceptual cover. And I hated all the photos. They were beautiful photos, but they didn’t represent the music. They weren’t warm. It was too conceptual. And I wasn’t an abstract person. In fact, I’m quite simple, you know? I like people. And the music is soul music. So I gave it all up. My manager told me to stop. And she said, « What are you going to do? Because you have to deliver it in a week. » There were two weeks left and I asked myself if there was already an image that would represent me well at this point in my life. And I found this image of a shooting I’d made two years ago, in black and white, and we put it in colour and changed it to purple, my favourite colour. And that’s it, really. There’s no crazy story. I just thought, I like this picture, that’s all. It’s my face. There was no crazy story!
Sound of Brit : The album ends with the magnificent track Carmen. Was it important for you to end the album with such a powerful track?
Olivia Dean: Yes, I did. Yes, I knew that as soon as I wrote the song. I wanted to dedicate the whole album to my grandmother and, of course, it had to be the closing song, you know, with the band and the jubilant celebration of her life and her legacy and that whole generation and what they brought to the UK. And hopefully that song will be separate from the whole album, you know, whatever happens, I want to make a lot of albums. But this particular song will live on, you know, beyond me and my grandchildren. It’s my grandmother’s voice and it’s there forever, and time is very powerful.
Sound of Brit : Dive was THE big single on the album, a real masterpiece. You played it on the TV show Quotidien, with an audience of millions. What was that like?
Sound of Brit: Yes, I did. I didn’t realise it was such a big show. Someone told me afterwards, because I have family who live in France, that it was something big. It was crazy. It was fun. I didn’t really know what was going on. I got on the plane. They told me: « You’re going to be on the air ». I met everyone there. It was lovely. We played. The audience was there and they were receptive. I don’t know what happened. It just happened. And I said, OK, fine, then I went home!
Sound of Brit : How did you go about writing Messy? Your collaborators, your recording locations, your writing…
Olivia Dean: I’d say it took 18 months from the start, from the moment I said to myself « this is it, I’m making an album » to the delivery of the album. And I’d say that writing the songs is the longest process. I’m very perfectionist when it comes to lyrics and chords. I feel that if the song is good, if you take everything away, you can play it just on the piano. So everything had to be that good for me. The recording process took two or three weeks and then the album was finished. I wrote a lot of the album in a bar in the UK, so I left London to go to my two songwriters’ houses and it was nice to have other perspectives. It was a pleasure to do it. My main aim was to have fun doing it, because I think sometimes you get so caught up in life that you need to be excellent and you forget that you’re living a dream. As I’m in the process of making my first album, I’ll never be able to do that again. So I just had fun. I tried to have fun. It wasn’t always fun. It was stressful. But most of the time I was trying to escape.
Sound of Brit : The need to get out of London to write, or as if it were a way of breathing easier.
Olivia Dean: And that’s exactly what I did. I mean, yes and no, because I did another trip where I left London for a fortnight to isolate myself. You know, that’s what they do in films! I did it once and I wrote that I hadn’t written any good music apart from one song. I wrote that one song, but as for the rest, I was putting too much pressure on myself. So it didn’t really work out. But it got me to the right place and to the right people, you know? Someone made a very good metaphor about writing music. It’s like surfing. You can train yourself to get on the board. If the waves aren’t there, you’re not going to surf today. And that’s the case. If you practise, the waves will come. So I’d say you have to find a balance”.
The last month or so has seen Olivia Dean receive awards and honours. The result of a lot of hard work and a magnificent debut album. I spotlighted Dean a little while ago. Since then, in such a short time, she has grown even stronger and more impressive. One of our finest young artists. Someone who you can see conquering the world. GLAMOUR spoke to Olivia Dean in October. They named her their Samsung Rising Star at their Women of the Year ceremony. It is clear that, with that and BBC’s kudos under her belt, here is someone everyone should know about:
“For GLAMOUR's Women of the Year Awards 2023, in partnership with Samsung, we have chosen Dean to be our Samsung Rising Star. She arrives to meet me on a sunny summer’s morning with her curly hair slicked back into a super-neat ponytail. Her outfit is very on-brand for the singer, whose sound and style shows she’s nostalgic but not afraid to innovate. Today she mixes classic Levi's jeans with a contemporary statement piece: a white and black denim biker jacket by Feben. Olivia is always trying to find ways to empower other women, particularly women of colour. She excitedly tells me to follow the Black London designer on Instagram because she’s doing “really cool stuff”.
A self-described feminist, it appears that navigating the industry has emboldened her push for empowerment. Dean no longer feels guilty rejecting other people’s demands to blaze her own trail. “I know what I want. I’m not a doll to be told what to do and what to say,” she asserts. She tells me that she’s at a place in her life where she’s feeling in control after feeling pulled in different directions in a male-dominated and pressurised industry. “I don’t let that happen to me anymore,” she asserts.
“At the beginning of my career, I felt boxed in because of the way that I look, or the colour of my skin. It was like I was supposed to make a certain type of music and I really took that on like I could only make R&B,” she says. “I love R&B and soul, but also psychedelic and folk. I don’t believe in boxes”. During her career she’s taken control of her own image and artistry by “learning the art of saying no”. While she could follow a formula to create cookie-cutter pop and get herself noticed, she says she can’t release a track unless it really means something to her and is made “purely for [her] soul”. “I can tell when people have made something just because they want to get to number one and I can’t do that,” she says. “I have quite an acute ear for bullsh*t.” In fact, one of her biggest regrets in life was releasing a song she knew intuitively she didn’t connect with.
She explains: “I won't say what song it is, because I don't think it's productive. I think I felt a bit pressured to release something and a lot of people were telling me that they loved it. It didn't set my soul on fire though. I put it out and the next morning, I just cried, and I cried. I knew that I had crossed a line with myself because I had to promote something I didn’t really believe in. I’m glad it happened so I can recognise that visceral feeling.”
Olivia has hit her stride and has found a renewed sense of purpose. “I take my vulnerable moments – moments where I needed to empower myself – and then put that into my music,” she says. “I love seeing women message me saying that it helped get them through a break-up or embrace their own independence.”
Hers is the sort of emotive voice that takes you to various planes of feeling, whether it’s back to a love you lost while listening to ‘The Hardest Part’; or vibing out to ‘Messy’ despite the disarray in your life; or being sonically taken to that vulnerable, chaotic emotional minefield of falling in love on ‘Dive’. The latter track feels like the perfect place to start with this rising talent. It’s such a masterfully crafted pop song imbued with soul bearing lyricism that can sit in playlists alongside the classics, you can sing it in your room, you can play it to your parents, and to be honest you can imagine it soundtracking a Christmas ad too. Her silky sweet vocals glide over angelic harmonies and Motown adjacent instrumentation. Dean’s aim is to make pop music that is reminiscent of what’s come before and you can hear that her influences hark back to an era she was not even born for, rather than being tied to current fast-moving trends or TikTok-geared sounds.
While she is a stellar recording artist, performing in front of a live audience is what really drives Dean’s passion for music. At school she felt “annoying”. “I was that kid that always wanted to sing in assembly,” she says. Then she was accepted by the Brit school, and found that being in a performing arts environment where everyone is the “same type of annoying” really transformed her into a less muted version of herself. “I realised I wasn’t lame, I just like entertaining people.” While its alumni include Adele, Tom Holland, and Amy Winehouse could be intimidating but she found it encouraging.
Being in a performance art environment means that in lockdown when gigs were impossible in enclosed spaces, Olivia drove round the country in an old milk truck to do a string of free shows for a nation deprived of live music. “I felt very lucky because live music makes people feel good,” she says. “Plus concerts are getting expensive, Jesus Christ”.
I will come to a sample review for the wonderous, sensational and unforgettable Messy. First, and one of the most illuminating and interesting interviews she has been involved with, takes me to Time Out. They spoke with Olivia Dean earlier this month. As is clear, there is no ego or any arrogance. She is an ambitious artist though, when you hear and read her speak, there is this humbleness and willingness to please. Someone impossible not to root for:
“Throughout our chat, Olivia prefaces any mentions of her wins with a disclaimer, because God forbid she ever came across as ungrateful. She’s careful to recognise that she was ‘very lucky’ that her parents supported her choice to pursue music as a career: ‘I never had the ‘‘that’s not gonna make you any money’’ thing.’ It’s the sort of grating self-awareness that we, Gen Z, pride ourselves on, but there’s a maturity in how she stands by her graft. ‘I’m definitely aware of the privileges to go to BRIT, and I think the title comes with, perhaps, a ‘people-give-you-a-look-in’ assumption,’ she says. ‘But I wouldn’t say that they hand you stuff on a plate. It is a free school in Croydon. You just apply because you know you want to do music and you know you want to work really hard.’
PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand
Olivia’s music isn’t trying to be something it’s not: it’s not especially abstract, edgy or intellectual. It’s easy-listening: the type of sweet, milky pop that makes you want to reach for the volume dial in the car, play through your headphones to make the night bus journey feel shorter or send to a friend getting over a breakup. But there’s no auto-tune, no Ibiza-tinged EDM beats which plague a lot of chart music. Instead, there’s a humanness to her work, an innocence in the sound as much as the lyrics which makes it irresistible to her many fans.
‘It’s not a straight line when your heart has been smooshed up,’ Olivia says, explaining that ‘Messy’ is about navigating the journey of falling in love again after a breakup. ‘It’s a messy road and I’ve become quite hardened. My heart has got a hard case.’ It’s not all gushy breakup songs or self-affirming anthems, though (although there is a bit of that). Her new single, ‘Ladies Room’, is inspired by a drunk chat she overheard in the toilets on a night out. ‘I was just in the cubicle peeing and I overheard this lady talking,’ she says. ‘She was like, ‘‘Girls, if I could give you any advice, never go out with a man who’s 20 years your senior.’’ I recorded her because I thought it was hilarious. The song originally had her voice at the beginning, but it’s illegal to record people. I was in the toilet queue before, so I don’t know how to find her. Wherever you are out there, you’re my inspiration!’
PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Hand
We’re there for longer than expected. She smiles, flirts, makes sarcastic jokes and never breaks eye contact. She’s here to please. And, sitting in the corner of a cosy pub, it seems like she’s in her element. Because as much as she loves the glamour that comes along with a career in music, at the end of the day she’s a wholesome soul: in her free time, she burns incense, listens to vinyl and knits scarves for her mum. When lockdown hit in 2020, she packed her band into a happy yellow van and drove around the UK, playing socially distanced gigs to cheer up strangers. After this, she’s going home to watch ‘Bake Off’. It’s a shell that must crack eventually, right?
‘Honestly, I think I’m just a pretty positive person,’ she says. ‘I’m definitely, like, not bubbly and happy all the time. But I feel like I’m very lucky in my life right now and I have a lot to be grateful for. I pride myself on being a good person, because nobody wants to work with a horrible person. It’s not a productive way to move through the industry’”.
I will end up soon. If you want to follow Olivia Dean, go and check out her official site, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. You can also listen to her music through Spotify. After such a triumphant year, I hope that Olivia Dean gets some time to unwind and reflect. Already tipped as an artist to watch in 2024, in addition to being acclaimed as one of this year’s best, the BBC Introducing's Artist of the Year is a new honour that should give her confirmation, if there was any doubt, that she is here for the long-run. I predict that she will be a festival mainstay in the summer. I will end with The Line of Best Fit and their 9/10 review for the gorgeous and hypnotic Messy:
“Starting in music at just 17 years old, her career has seen her selling out the Jazz Café plus hometown shows in KOKO and The Roundhouse. Now, at 24, her debut album Messy is no exception to her upward trajectory, using creative artistry to scrapbook elements of love, life and everything in-between into a homegrown directory of soulful buoyancy.
Balancing a fine line between refined and authentic, the record is universally carefree, with atmospherics ranging from dreamy to dark, soulful to spine tingling. Title track “Messy” is a perfect outline of the entire body of work "It's ok if it's messy," Dean croons as glittering synths echo intermittently, whilst mouth trumpet mimes feature alongside a steady build up a of acoustic tropical serenity.
Following her words of wisdom, Olivia Dean’s self-proclaimed mess is a rally of to and fro. Varying from delirious encounters in pub bathrooms in “Ladies Room,” the freedom of falling in love in the euphoric “Dive,” to the risks of taking that plunge, showcased in the playfully wonderful “Danger,” with thoughts that can only be translated into the method of music.
On the deeply personal “Carmen,” Dean pays tribute to her Grandmother who boarded her first ever plane at the age of 18 to the UK, as part of the Windrush Generation. An outpouring of overwhelming gratitude, the track is effervescent with recordings of her grandma’s rich voice, steel pan drums and horns set against undercurrents of delicate bass guitar. The star of the show, however, vocalises itself through Olivia Dean’s poignant storytelling, as she sings "You transplanted a family tree, and a part of it grew into me."
Despite bringing a joyful vibrance to the vast majority of the record, Dean continues to validate that she is the master of versatility. "I’m not as strong as I appear / I’m way more anxious than I seem" she admits on “Everybody’s Crazy,” bearing resemblance to the early soulful ballads of 00’s Adele. Rich with enigmatic chord progressions tied stylishly together with elegant strings, “No Man” is a dark tale of abandonment that see’s Dean reflect on a man’s neglect, with a sound conveying a hybrid of Arctic Monkeys’ Humbug and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
It’s one thing to transform your deepest thoughts, experience and feelings into fiercely beautiful lyrics, the next steps of creating a catalogue of songs with music and vocals is just as precarious. In spite of this, no matter how disorganised Olivia Dean proclaims this album to be, she doesn’t miss a beat – and instead generates a record with just about everything to deem itself ‘perfect’”.
Aged just twenty-four, Olivia Dean is at the start of her career. An award-nominated debut album and some recent honour proves that she is a remarkable artist whose is a natural-born talent. The London-born artist is one I will recommend to everyone. Someone who is going to explode and go to new heights next year. If Dean was nervous about Messy and how it would be received, then she need not have worried! Given all the love it has received, she can rest assured that…
THE hardest part is over!