Hard work, romance and bell hooks: how Olivia Dean became British pop’s newest megastar

Hard work, romance and bell hooks: how Olivia Dean became British pop’s newest megastar After a Grammy and a global breakthrough, the 26-year-old singer could sweep the board at next week’s Brits. Her closest collaborators explain her massive appeal S aturday’s Brit awards will feature performances from heavy hitters such as Harry Styles and Mark Ronson – but all eyes will be on Olivia Dean, the Londoner who has become one of the UK’s biggest breakouts in years, thanks to her second album The Art of Loving and its mega-smash UK No 1 single Man I Need. Nominated for five awards, this year’s ceremony is likely to serve as a coronation for Dean, who has found international success on a scale that most contemporary British artists struggle to achieve. The Art of Loving focuses on love in all its permutations, applying meditations on friendship and romance to a light, gauzy blend of bossa nova, throwback R&B and indie-pop. Dean delivers each song with unfussy exuberance – she somehow captures both the otherworldly poise of Diana Ross and the charm of your best friend killing it at karaoke – and has become the voice of a generation whose romantic lives have been complicated by dating apps and other digitally mediated mating rituals. Her rise has been a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair: her Mercury-nominated debut Messy, from 2023, peaked in the Top 5 of the UK charts and received widespread acclaim, but didn’t make significant impact in the US; a year ago, she was hardly the household name she is now. But over the past few months, the 26-year-old graduate of the Brit school has chiselled her way into the pop firmament: The Art of Loving debuted at No 1 in the UK on its release in September 2025 – the first record by a British female solo artist to do so since Adele, who debuted at No 1 in 2021 with her album 30 – and No 8 on the US Billboard chart. In the following weeks, Dean mounted an old-fashioned charm offensive, performing Man I Need everywhere from Jools Holland to ...