A Soundtrack for Growing Pains, Big Feelings, and the Messy Beauty of your Twenties
As the leaves begin to fall and the days grow shorter, Olivia Dean’s second album, The Art of Loving, captures the ache of nostalgia and the quiet weight of a summer now past. That first autumn day, when the air turns crisp and the sun’s warmth starts fading, that’s where Dean’s soothing, soulful voice finds its home. The Art of Loving is an album about navigating your twenties, a time when you find yourself caught in a web of endless possibilities and searching for a sense of belonging. A feeling that resonates with so many. It’s about love in all its forms: romantic, platonic, familial, and above all, self-love. How can you find your way back to yourself after losing yourself in another person? What does it really mean to love yourself?
In The Art of Loving, a 26-year-old explores the different forms love can take on, and with it, the grief, pain, joy, and the many, many lessons. “I want to encourage people to think about love as more of a practice than this fantastical thing”, Olivia tells her audience at an intimate listening event in Berlin in early September. “I want people to look at themselves the way that they love others. Not necessarily in a romantic way. I think love is family, friendship, and the effort that you put into those relationships, because what you put in is what you get back. In anything in life, really.”
The concept for The Art of Loving was inspired by Olivia Dean’s visit to Mickalene Thomas’s (b. 1971) exhibition All About Love (2024-2025) in Los Angeles. The exhibition features colorful, intimate mixed-media portraits of Black womanhood through a feminist and queer lens. The title itself draws from Bell Hooks’ book of the same name (1999), which offers the reader a feminist perspective on love and the conventions of the emotion. “The first time I read [All About Love], it really broke me open. I had an interesting two years thinking about love and what it means to me”, Olivia explains.
The Art of Loving is a very raw and intimate testament of vulnerability, longing, and contradictions. It captures the rush of being loved-bombed, the hesitation to open up, the loneliness that collides with the fear of being seen, and the thrill of being reckless, occasionally. That intimacy stems, in part, from the way the album was made. “We had to create a safe space to be completely vulnerable in order to create the best art,” Dean reflects.
Before this, Dean had never had a proper studio space, and making music often felt restrained, just not quite like her. For The Art of Loving, they rented a studio for eight weeks, and Olivia filled it with her own pictures, books, and even her piano. The space felt lived-in and cozy, a temporary home. “It added a warmth to the music that I was really searching for. I feel so lucky that I got to make it that way”, she says. A fated encounter with producer Zach Nahome after a show led to an exciting creative partnership that perfectly complemented her vision for the album. “Sometimes you need someone to lift you up when you’re not feeling like doing it yourself, and that’s part of production too. Being a good producer is being a good person”, Dean explains. The album comes entirely without features, putting Dean’s incredible voice front and center.
Olivia has been crafting her music for over a decade, with her debut album Messy earning a Mercury Prize nomination in 2023, putting her music on the map. She’s played sold-out shows, performed on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, and her upcoming 2026 headline tour will include two shows at London’s infamous O2 Arena. “There are so many moments you pinch yourself”, she recalls. “When I first met my manager when I was 17, she asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, I want to make an album, play Jools Holland, and play the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. So, when I finally walked out on that stage, we were both crying. That was the best moment of my life”.
If Dean’s debut album Messy was the wide-eyed younger sibling, The Art of Loving feels like the wiser older sister gently patting you on your back, reassuring you: it’s all still a bit messy, but you’re growing through it all, and ultimately you will be fine. The Art of Loving is ultimately about fostering connection, showing up for yourself and the people around you. Reflecting on the world surrounding her, Dean concludes, “I think we live in a day and age where things can be a bit disposable with each other, and I am someone with big feelings, I feel very deeply. Be nice to each other”. A quiet reminder that love in any form is not only a feeling but something that needs to be cultivated.
