OLIVIA DEAN told the Voice her new project, ‘Messy’, represents ‘where I’m at now.”
The fast rising UK soul-pop star announced this week that her long-awaited debut album is set for June 30, and will feature the singles ‘Danger’ and ‘UFO’.
‘Messy’ cements Dean as one of the most original and versatile voices in UK pop. Crafting classic yet conversational hooks with genre-fluid tinges, she’s honed a way of exploring universal themes of love, loss and everything in between with razor-sharp but open-hearted storytelling.
Of her debut album, Dean shares: “Going into making the record, I’d just done this ‘Growth’ project. And for ages, I was like, well, my debut album needs to be what I’ve grown into, I need to have the answer.
“And that really confused me for a while. Then I realised, I’m always going to be growing. So this doesn’t have to be a destination, it’s just where I’m at now.”
She added: “It’s funny because I think it’s the most fine-tuned I’ve got my sound to be, but also the most carefree I’ve been in actually making music… some of it’s quite vulnerable but it was just made out of pure fun and joy and unbotheredness, and I think I’ve done a good job with calling it Messy because if anybody says it’s all over the place I’ll be like, yeah.”
Whether it’s the tension she felt in figuring out what space she wanted to occupy musically, or the logistical mayhem of actually producing such a big body of work, or just the everyday cacophony of life and feelings, Messy is a punchy and unexpected debut exploring a wealth of sounds, influences and styles. “Even with the sonics of the record, I’ve left a lot of sound in there, of talking, of the piano pedals. I like that it sounds human. On the title track, there’s a layer of me doing mouth trumpet sounds that was just meant to be a placeholder and I was like let’s just keep it! There’s no rules,” Dean enthused.
“I tried to just expel people’s voices from my mind about what I was supposed to make or what would be cool or what would be the most successful thing for me to make and made stuff that I want to listen to.”
Dean today also shares her new single ‘Dive’, a twinkling declaration, fortified with nostalgic horns and dreamy harmonies, about dancing on the edge of the cliff before being ready to freefall into something new.
The news follows a sold out tour of the UK and Europe this month, including huge shows at London’s KOKO and iconic Roundhouse, which saw tickets fly out, fans queuing around the block.
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