“I want to write something that I can dance to.” That’s what rising soul-pop artist Olivia Dean declared earlier this year when she arrived at her East London recording studio for a session with British producer-songwriter Zach Nahome and songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., who had just flown out from the United States. Dean was thinking about her stage show: she had spent a good chunk of 2024 on the road in the U.K. and Europe and had more tour dates booked for this spring and summer. She had been presenting the sumptuous songs from her 2023 debut Messy for growing audiences but knew that her live show could use more tempo.

“We started with the 6/8 groove,” Dean recalls today of the studio session. “I had a crush at the time. I was like, ‘Listen: talk to me!’ That initial joy when you first fancy somebody — I just wanted to channel that essence into a song.”

The result, “Man I Need,” has quickened the pace of Dean’s career: the pillowy, gospel-inflected track gave the London native her first Billboard Hot 100 hit with a No. 82 debut in early September and has shuffled upward each week since, currently sitting at No. 25. The timing of the song’s explosion couldn’t have been better for Dean: in the days leading up to the Sept. 26 release of her sophomore album, The Art of Loving, on Island Records, “Man I Need” pushed to No. 9 on the Billboard Global 200, No. 2 on the Official U.K. Singles chart and regularly appeared in the top 10 of the U.S. Spotify daily top 50 chart.

“Every day, I’m being told a new stat,” Dean says with a laugh. “I’ve never been on the charts before, and I’ve been putting out music for quite a long time, so it’s a bit of a new world for me.”

Indeed, the 26-year-old’s mainstream breakthrough has been preceded by a decade of training: raised in Highams Park in North East London, Dean was accepted to the BRIT School at the age of 15, initially studying musical theater before switching her attention to songwriting. Soon after, Emily Braham, a manager who was then working with the U.K. drum’n’bass band Rudimental, had been invited to a BRIT School original song showcase and watched Dean perform for the first time. “She walked onstage, and there was something immediately captivating about her,” recalls Braham, who signed her in 2019.

Rudimental happened to be looking for a new backing vocalist around the same time, and Braham connected her with the group. Dean earned the spotlight as the featured vocalist on the group’s single “Adrenaline” the same year and then self-released her first EP, Ok Love You Bye. (She also signed a deal with Island Records UK in 2019; by 2023, she had also joined the label for U.S. representation.)

As she worked her way toward a debut album, Dean’s solo music naturally gravitated towards elegant, jazzy neo-soul — a sound that had become mainstream during her childhood thanks to artists like Amy Winehouse, Jill Scott and Angie Stone, but had been largely out of vogue by the early 2020s. “I’ve never been somebody who has followed trends or made music because of what else was popular at the time,” she says. “I like old music, I like soul music, I like Motown. That’s what I wanted to make, and in my mind, I’m in my own lane in that way.”

Although Messy scored a top 10 debut on the Official U.K. Albums chart upon its June 2023 release and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (which recognizes British and Irish music), Dean says that making her debut full-length in a variety of locations and recording sessions proved to be “a bit fragmented, and I went through a lot of self-doubt in the process.” Instead of hopscotching across different studios again, Dean built her own studio setting for her sophomore album.

“I decided that what I’d really like to do is to rent a beautiful space in East London, bring my piano and the people I love to work with, and just work from there for eight weeks,” she says. That period played out last March and April, with very few breaks — “I slept there, we drank a lot of red wine, stayed up late, cried and laughed” — and The Art of Loving as the outcome.

In addition to tweaking her creative process, Dean says that touring behind Messy last year better informed how she wanted to arrange her next album in the studio. She road-tested some material from The Art of Loving, including the subtly driving lead single “Nice to Each Other” and the buttery, harmony-heavy follow-up “Lady Lady,” during a monthlong U.S. headlining tour in July and August. If not for those recent live shows, Dean points out, “Man I Need” might have not been selected as the album’s third pre-release track in mid-August. “Honestly, it wasn’t supposed to be a single,” she says. “When I got to play it with my band in rehearsals, they were like, ‘This should be a single.’ And I was like, ‘You know what? Yeah! This one is fun!’ ”

While the promotional focus for The Art of Loving will continue to center around “Man I Need” as it keeps rising, Braham says that the album was always going to elevate Dean’s profile. “With this record, she felt more powerful and more intentional,” Braham says. “She co-produced the record — she’s on the buttons, plays across the whole thing and wrote on every song. She had a really good time making this record, and I think you can hear all of those things.”

Dean plans to spend the next few months promoting The Art of Loving around the world, with scheduled visits to Australia, Europe and the U.S.; part of her time in the States will be used to support Sabrina Carpenter on a fall arena run, including five shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden in late October. Dean has been looking forward to the dates with Carpenter for months, saying that she’s “excited to watch and learn from a masterclass of a pop show.” She also acknowledges that a few more U.S. fans will recognize her at the arena shows than they would have before “Man I Need” was released.

“What’s lovely to me is that ‘Man I Need’ was made out of such a moment of joy,” Dean says. “That seems to be what it’s bringing and the feeling surrounding it. You can’t really ask for more.”

A version of this story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.