We live in a time where it’s cool to romanticize our lives — turning coffee runs and late-night drives into something cinematic. Olivia Dean’s new album, The Art of Loving, leans exactly into that.
On TikTok, the last track, “I’ve Seen It,” has become the soundtrack to clips of sunsets, train rides and moments with friends — an ode to the beauty of love found everywhere. The song makes you feel as if you’re standing in the middle of life and noticing love show up in a hundred different forms, across life’s many facets. Over the course of the album, Dean invites us to notice those forms ourselves.
Dean’s debut album was Messy, which came out in 2023. The album was well received, but it didn't quite define her place in the music scene. Over the next few years, she began shaping her musical identity into a culmination of R&B, neo-soul and pop with singles that made the most of her striking vocals, brass flourishes and piano riffs. Her gospel-choir background shines through especially well in this album, creating the kind of soulful, Adele-like atmosphere that hangs in the air long after the song is over.
What distinguishes the tracks in The Art of Loving from Dean’s other songs is its emotional intentionality. Most of her heartfelt ballads have wrestled with themes of self-awareness and vulnerability, but here, that exploration feels deeper and more nuanced. The title track “The Art of Loving (Intro),” opens with soft harmonies that set the tone: This is an album concerning love in all dimensions — yearning and heartbreak, endings and beginnings, intimacy and independence. Dean herself says, “hopefully it will make you laugh, dance and cry,” and she delivers on all three.
We got a sneak preview of the album before its release with the singles “Nice to Each Other” and “Man I Need.” The former, released first back in May 2025, pulses with moody synths and spinning guitar textures, capturing the tentative excitement of new romance. When Dean sings, “Can we say we’ll never say the classic stuff / just show it,” she cuts through the cliches with a plea for love that is rooted not just in the words we say but in actions we take.
“Man I Need,” released in August 2025, is similar in texture, with moods that are playful and cinematic — almost like stepping into a La La Land daydream — made complete with buoyant drums and a chorus that asks, with both lightness and urgency, for clarity in love.
Beyond the sparkle of these two singles, the album finds its weight in the slower, more heavy-hitting ballads interspersed throughout. The song “Close Up” captures the ache of chasing after love you know may slip away, beginning with the haunting lyric: “Chasing rabbits don’t usually end / with happy ever after.” Dean hovers between intimacy and uncertainty, with the line dividing them growing more blurred as the song goes on. In “Let Alone The One You Love,” she deepens that ache with lines like “You’re the hug that had to end,” eliciting the feeling of heartbreak that comes with having to leave someone that once felt safe and warm.
Throughout the album, Dean also turns inward, touching on themes of self-love. “Baby Steps” is a self-declaration of independence and a reminder that healing after a heartbreak is gradual, but nevertheless powerful. With the line, “This house gon love itself,” Dean insists that we are not defined by endings, rather we are shaped by them. It is not a process of undoing, but of remaking, in baby steps.
The track that follows, “A Couple Minutes,” opens with strings and a funk edge, extending this reflection on healing by showing that failed relationships can still hold beauty. With its refrain, “Love’s never wasted when it’s shared,” Dean suggests that even imperfect relationships leave behind something valuable.
The album wraps up with “I’ve Seen It,” perhaps its most affecting track. Filled with sentimental and slow melodies, it celebrates love in everyday disguises: a stranger on the tube, friendships that dance around a table and parents who first teach us what love means. Despite the word “love” never appearing throughout the song, its presence radiates with every note.
There’s a reason this album caught fire online. We often imagine love as a mystery to solve, or something to win or lose, but The Art of Loving reframes it as a presence to witness. Dean’s music reminds us that love isn’t just in sweeping gestures or heartbreak anthems — it’s in the small, ordinary details that stitch our daily life together. And if you let it, her album might make you laugh, dance or cry — and notice love everywhere, too.
