As a follow-up to her 2023 debut album, Messy, British R&B/neo-soul singer-songwriter Olivia Dean released her sophomore album, The Art of Loving two years later on September 26, 2025. The album was preceded by the singles “Nice To Each Other”, “Lady Lady” and “Man I Need”. It feels like it was made for us as college students – a lot of these songs are relatable, as they explore the game of romance and the theme of moving on.
While her pop-soul/neo-soul style remains the same, this is a big artistic shift for Dean, as she had left her previous record label, EMI Records, and signed a joint record deal with Capitol Records and Polydor Records. In Messy, her lyricism was more vulnerable, as she sings about her past relationships and her reluctance to move on, thus being messy. While, on The Art of Loving, she sings about moving on, for there are better days ahead. A good example of this is a piano ballad in the form of “Lady Lady”, a standout track on the album that Dean described in an interview with pm studio world wide news as a “song about the universe, mother nature and accepting the plans she has for you.”
The entire album seems personal, as there is an absence of features and she is singing about the lessons she has learned and her evolving viewpoints on love and romance. On the opening track, “The Art of Loving (intro),” she sings,“It wasn’t all for nothing, yeah, you taught me something,” showing that she is still trying to make sense of what love is. Dean also highlights the excitement of love in “So Easy (To Fall In Love),” where she urges the man who is interested in her to make his move: “So, come give me a call, and we’ll fall into us.”
Yet, the album still features themes of growth and healing in “Baby Steps,” where Dean describes her life after a breakup where she’s getting used to being single and learning to love herself once again, as she sings: “Right, left, baby steps… It’s not the end, it’s the making of… there’ll be roses on the shelf, ‘cause this house gon’ love itself.”
As college students who are trying to find our rhythm and figure out different aspects of our lives, be it personal, academic, career-wise or romantic, we would be able to relate a lot to The Art of Loving. Dean sings about what we all are thinking when it comes to our romantic lives: romance is complicated and we never seem to fully understand it, so let’s try to make sense of this rabbit hole called love, and more importantly, discovering true self-love before anything else, because “the more you look, the more you find… it’s around you all the time.”
We tend to stay in our own bubbles when it comes to music, but with this album, take two steps into new bubbles of genres like pop-soul and soft rock, to embark on a journey with Dean to crack the code that is The Art of Loving, a journey that’s full of joy, uncertainty, heartbreak and growth, for there are many lessons to be learned.