If “Man I Need” is your first Olivia Dean song, play “Dive” from Messy next. It has the same pleasure of a singer settling comfortably into a groove. Then put on “Let Alone the One You Love” and hear what happens when she slows the room down.
Apple Music named Dean its 2026 Artist of the Year on November 9. A listener on r/popheads asked where she came from after hearing The Art of Loving. The question gets at something about discovering an artist through a hit. You hear them everywhere at once, while the audience that got there first has spent years forming attachments to songs you’ve yet to hear.
Pick your next song
Keep dancing · “Dive”
Go back to Messy. Hear how the brass accents put a little spring into the beat. It’s a good companion to “Man I Need” if you came for the feeling of a whole band making space for one voice.
Stay up talking · “Let Alone the One You Love”
Pull up the The Art of Loving track list and play “Close Up” first. The pair moves from the desire to be seen clearly to the pain of asking for care. Dean can make a request sound confident on the single, then let a similar need sit exposed for an entire ballad.
Hear what was there before the hit · “The Hardest Part”
Choose the version on Messy. Compare it with the separately released duet with Leon Bridges. Hear what a second voice adds to a song about growing apart. The duet gives a private realization another person to address.
Try the album’s soft landing · “I’ve Seen It”
The closing track on The Art of Loving gives the album’s questions about love an answer you can live with. Try it straight after the short title track, then return to the full sequence. The bookends leave room for what the songs between them keep stumbling over.
From Messy to Apple Music’s artist of the year
2020 · What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays?
The four-track EP includes an earlier “The Hardest Part.” It gives you a place to start before the debut album if you’d rather follow the songs in release order.
2023 · Messy
Dean’s debut album puts “Dive,” “The Hardest Part” and “Carmen,” a tribute to her grandmother on the same record. Start there if the love songs on her second album make you want to hear the relationships she writes about outside romance.
2025 · The Art of Loving
The second album arrived September 26. The UK’s Official Charts recorded the album and “Man I Need” at No. 1 together, both firsts for Dean. The Apple announcement also notes that she opened for Sabrina Carpenter at Madison Square Garden that fall.
February 2026 · Grammy and BRIT wins
Dean won Best New Artist at the Grammys, then four BRIT Awards, including artist and album of the year. The two honors make sense together when you separate a breakthrough year from a debut release.
November 2026 · Apple Music Artist of the Year
The Apple Music announcement reports that “Man I Need” appeared on its Daily Top 100 every day from August 29, 2025 through the announcement. That’s Apple’s account of its own chart, a measure of the song’s staying power on that service.
Why the album is worth hearing in order
Apple’s announcement identifies bell hooks’s All About Love as an influence. That gives the title some weight. Dean spends part of the record asking to be loved clearly and part of it figuring out how to do that work herself. The single is a bright invitation into that conversation. The hesitation, impatience and tenderness of the surrounding songs are what make it feel like a conversation in the first place.
If you found Dean through Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, “It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” was written for the film. Put it next to “Man I Need.” One makes room for uncertainty, the other gives desire a line you can sing back. Both would make sense in a romcom, at very different points in the story.
For another way into the songs, Dean’s official catalogue lists The Art of Loving Live. She’s also on the November 16 Grammy nominations broadcast as a presenter.