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Olivia Dean skipped a grade, as far as the touring circuit goes. Soon after taking the stage at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena for a two-night stand this week, the singer said, “The last time we played in L.A., we played two shows at the Fonda, I think a year ago. Was anybody at those shows?” That sparked thousands upon thousands of people to lie with their cheers, claiming they’d all been in that 1,500-cap room. “Is this anybody’s first time seeing us play?” Dean asked. About the same number of people cheered, telling the truth this time.
There should be no shame in admitting you came in a little late on her ascent; it’s been a fast one. Dean wasn’t about to apologize for passing go and bypassing intermediary stops like the Greek on her way up, but she did want to acknowledge the privilege. “It’s not lost on me that that’s a big jump,” she told the roughly 19,000 fans in her downtown audience Tuesday night. You could argue that it wasn’t even quite big enough; resale tickets were at a premium for Dean, with the $400s as the get-in-the-door price on the secondary market, and lots of tickets being priced in the the low four-figures.
Her second album’s brash musical prophecy has proven true, then: It is so easy (to fall in love) [with her], as a matter of fact. And we might love calling her “wonderful” more than she enjoys hearing it.
But this Crypto.com engagement was a good chance to do a brakes test, before she gets even more accolades. Dean noted “another fun fact about this evening: the last time actually I was on this stage was at the Grammys. I don’t know, I think this room has magic energy,” she said. “We’ll see.” Roughly half a year ago, she was at the podium accepting the award for best new artist, the only category in which she’d been nominated. It’s safe to say this counted as a semiannual stop for her, then, because come Feb. 7, 2027, she’ll be back and, because of pecularities of the nominating periods, up for a lot more this time. There is an approximately 100% chance “The Art of Loving” will be nominated for album of the year, and that “The Man I Love” will be a top contender mix for record and song trophies; some would even say she’s the frontrunner. But should cynics in the industry be tapping the brakes a little, to make sure everybody believes Dean is all that, before giving her an official coronation?
Nothing sets aside lingering skepticism about an artist’s star power or prowess like a great performance on a major stage. That’s what she delivered Tuesday night at Crypto, seeming seasoned well beyond her 27 years, and as firmly in command of that stage as just about anyone who’s ever played it. Dean didn’t come off as having anything to prove to the Recording Academy or anyone else: Everything about her performance seemed ingratiatingly effortless, even if experience tells us that kind of expert effervesence is harder to pull off than it looks.
Dean has an unerring sense about how to let her voice glide to the cumulus layer and back again, without remotely ever going over the top. She has a brilliant sense of how to inhabit a sometimes small stage footprint with a surfeit of graceful physical movement; seeing her hand and arm gestures is like watching a breeze made literal. And her material, light as it can seem, does have substance. As Dean proceeded through all 12 songs from “The Art of Loving” (plus another 12 lesser-known songs that predate it), it suddenly seemed like this is an album that has been, if anything, underrated. At least by the cognoscenti, anyway. The public has already voted, and they’re not wrong about the record, or her.
L.A. this week was only the second stop on her first big U.S. tour, following an opening run in Oakland. For anyone reading ahead of a subsequent date, not much here will count as spoilers. Dean has opted for a fairly static but beautifully rendered production that (a) has a classic look and (b) doesn’t make you look away from her. The way her seven-piece band and two backup singers are positioned on a platform with just a couple of steps up or down recalls some of the pop-soul bandstands of yore. There’s a huge, curvy curtain behind them that acts as a screen for closeups — effective for getting a better look at her, as everyone would wish, but with so many ripples that your attention inevitably drifts back to the real Dean, however close to or far away from the stage you are. The B-stage only gets used for a few late-arriving numbers, but it’s a beautiful thing, looking like a white granite flower that’s opened to host her in a white gown on the rear floor. No flying; almost no choreography (apart from a few moves she does in tandem with her two b.g.v.s); no gimmicks. Can an arena show get by nowadays on presence alone, sans props? Dean’s can.
Comparing her to some of the other female British greats who are out there at the moment, Dean is a lot less chatty than Raye, but obviously much more so than Lily Allen and her fourth-wall-respecting show. It’s nice to hear Dean talking between more of the songs than not, as she shares a good number of thoughts about what her “Art of Loving” songs are about. What they’re not about is needing a man — the title of her biggest hit notwithstanding. The album is a bit of a Trojan horse, to borrow a currently popular image. It sounds like a happy album that could be the soundtrack to a perfect relationship, but the songs skew much more toward subtly exploring how disappointing men are. Guys’ inability to fully deliver for Dean is explored in trenchant lyrics that seem to be exploring fateful realizations about so-so situationships in real time.
You might not fully take in what the album’s message is, or where its positivity comes from, until you hear Dean deliver a lot of short speeches on stage about what she clearly considers to be her real focus: the company of friends and family — BFFs over b.f.s — and the duty to exercise self-care. The majority young women in the crowd, many wearing Dean’s signature polka dots as part of their outfits, ran this self-help patter up, as well they should have. One of her most popular songs has the line “It’s so easy to fall in love with me” as its lyrical hook, and yet by the end of the tune, it’s not clear at all that the fellow in question is doing his part to follow through. Hence, the message Dean delivered in introducing “So Easy (to Fall in Love)” at Crypto: “It’s a song about loving yourself,” the singer explained. “It’s a song about looking in the mirror at least sometimes and going, ‘You know what? Yeah, I am sexy. I am.’ And I think it’s very important that you do that at least sometimes. So for this next song, I want you to imagine that everybody in this room fancies you, OK? You’re looking your best. You’re feeling your best. It’s your day.”
There was more to Dean’s philosophy, including a nod to a famous Black feminist thinker. “We live in a world that is very easy to think that we’re all super connected and in tune with each other, and actually, I feel like we’re more disconnected than ever… So if you haven’t read bell hooks’ ‘All About Love,’ I really recommend the book. This album was written in response to that, and it gave me this definition of love that I like is perfect, and I’d love to share it with you: I think loving another person in your life… and that doesn’t even mean romantically; I think that could be a friend, it can be a family member, just anybody you wanna truly love… I think you want to see them be the best version of themselves, and you want to nurture that and we help them to shine and be them in the best way that that means to them. So I just wanna remind everybody in this room that you deserve to be loved that way, and I deserve that too.” In case there was any doubt she is a case study as well as guru, she then sent the next song out “to my ex-boyfriend.”
bell hooks, and music hooks: it’s a good combo. The song she subsequently performed after that intro, “Let Alone the One You Love,” is one of the few in her set that goes fully for a sense of drama in both lyrics and music, and you could wish she’d do even more showstoppers in that intensified style. Yet it’s hard to muster up many complaints about how most of her songs maintain their sparkle, even when beneath the surface they turn out to be about someone diminishing hers. Dean doesn’t have a lot of exact analogs in her version of pop-R&B, but it’s easy to come up with some underserved niches that she at least partially fills in: the one held once upon a time by Whitney Houston, when she was in her “I Wanna Dance” mood more than full-diva mode; Sade, for making something out of emotional hardships that goes down extremely easily; and Amy Winehouse, but a wholesome Amy Winehouse. There are a lot of long-lost footsteps out there to follow in, as she treads lightly.
Costume changes were few in the show, as Dean — now entirely curly-haired, versus the different styling she had around the ’26 Grammys — first appeared in layered mermaid green, like she’d just stepped out of the flora and fauna; then a white gown for the trip to the B-stage; and something more shiny and Tina-esque for the final act, when she abandoned the ballads and shook a tail feather alongside the band. As movement goes, Dean is so flowingly expressive with her hands and arms — even when she’s using a handheld mic — that she almost doesn’t need to move at all below the waist to keep a crowd visually captivated. But toward the end of night, as she’s throwing in a Curtis Mayfield cover alongside her most upbeat material, her legs do finally catch up with her upper extremities in making dance a big part of the equation.
Her show also sports a sit-down segment in which she sings ballads alongside an acoustic guitarist and bassist (and picks up a guitar herself). This might seem like a slight left turn if you’ve only heard “The Art of Loving,” but Dean also dives into her lesser-heard 2023 freshman album, “Messy,” for a half-dozen selections, and that record was much more eclectic than its followup. The debut felt like a singer-songwriter record that happened to have some savvy R&B interludes; “Art of Loving” feels more like a solidly in-the-pocket pop-R&B exercise that happens to have some leftover, left-of-center acoustic touches. “The Art of Loving” is the more fulfilling of the two albums, for how she went for the mainstream brass ring and was able to easily grasp it, making the kind of music that captivates the world — and feels even more delightful in concert, with the horn section allowed a louder spot in the mix. Still, it would not be at all surprising if Dean reverted back to something “Messy”-er in the future. But it’s great to have her in the realm she’s operating in now, as a mainstream superstar-in-the-making who’s making records that have a natural appeal to just about every demographic on earth.
There’s a happy paradox to Dean’s still-short career: She arrived as a full package — voice, looks, song sensibilities — but still benefitted from artist development, as she grew further into the sound of this world-conquering second album. Needless to say, that development will be rewarded with a trip back to Crypto.com in not so very months. There will be plenty of other worthy contenders, but should the Academy decide this is time for an old-fashioned sweep, it’ll mark a deserved instance of industry tastemakers and hoi polloi all being on the same page. By the time her song “Man I Need” ends, it’s not at all clear that the man in question has proven he can step up to the plate — but Dean most definitely has.
Setlist for Olivia Dean at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, July 14, 2026:
The Art of Loving (Intro)
Nice to Each Other
Lady Lady
So Easy (to Fall in Love)
Close Up
Let Alone the One You Love
Messy
UFO
Touching Toes
Something Inbetween
I’ve Seen It
Carmen
Echo
Time
Loud
A Couple Minutes
The Hardest Part
Baby Steps
Ladies Room
Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield cover)
OK Love You Bye
It Isn’t Perfect but It Might Be
Dive
Man I Need
English (US) ·