Olivia Dean Stages a Lesson on Love on Her Biggest Stage Yet
8.1.26 - Chicago, IL
It’s common to say an artist graced a stage, but Olivia Dean’s presence on stage truly is the embodiment of grace itself. This was no more apparent than at the main stage at Lollapalooza this year, as she showed up promptly, beginning her set a full minute before she was slated to go on, floating out in a floor-length gown. And yet even before a crowd of almost 100,000 people (TimeOut), her distinct poise and abundance of gratitude made the performance feel somehow intimate. Even though it’s only her second album, no one would have guessed it, her lyrics imbuing her crowd with the wisdom of an old timer, her performance taking on an almost therapeutic quality as she bears her heart and exudes, above all, love.
Her album, The Art of Loving, won her the Grammy for Best New Artist this year, and hearing her perform it live, it’s clear why. As she stepped on stage in a billowing champagne gown, framed by a soft purple shell and backup singers in sparkling black dresses on one side, with a brass band fitted in tuxedos on the other, it evoked a picture of an Art Deco Birth of Venus, combining her classic 1920s-era swank with a modern enthusiasm as she spun and giggled across the stage. Watching her was like watching the two play out at once: classic and modern, her flapper essence and jazzy Motown-inspired voice contrasted by easy-to-sing-along pop melodies. And in this same way she bridges the gap in her lyrics between love and heartbreak, loss and joy, with an immensely passionate presence.
She began with “Nice to Each Other,” the crowd immediately joining in to overwhelm her sound with a booming “I don’t need a boyfriend”—a sentiment it seemed everyone could relate to. Olivia Dean’s Art of Loving is a chronicle of how to love, and Olivia wanted to make it clear that, like her inspiration, Bell Hook’s All About Love (which she referenced more than once), this is both an account of her own love life and a manual for how to love, a sermon to the crowd.
Before singing “So Easy (To Fall in Love),” Olivia took a moment to confide in her audience, bearing her past insecurities and urging the festival crowd to love yourself, telling us to “think everyone in the crowd is into you.” In this way, she transferred that easy confidence of hers to the poncho-covered crowd with muddy feet as the air fizzed with her sincerity and passion.
It’s obvious she practiced what she preached: as she sang “Close Up," her face twisted into a grimace, feeling every word she wrote like she was right back where she was when she first wrote it, pounding her chest. It’s in this unique way that Olivia was able to translate the exact feeling to us without any of the fluff or performance, punctuated by a soaring chorus from her very talented female backup singers.
By far, this was the biggest crowd Olivia Dean has played for, her first time headlining for a festival, and yet, her presence felt natural. She overflowed with gratitude and got close to crying a few times but kept her signature poise and grace, bouncing around the stage in heels like she was just as happy to be there as we were, the Lollapalooza soldiers who trekked through the mud and the rain and stood in a crowd of 97,000 people. To understand the scale, this number was double the size of her Dublin Marley Park 40,000 person show last month, which was her biggest up to this point, and almost incomparable to her performance at Lollapalooza last year, when she played on a side stage for only about 1,500 people. Olivia Dean herself acknowledged this, and it was clear she was feeling immense amounts of gratitude—if there ever was a “making it” moment, this was it.
To celebrate this accomplishment, she surprised the crowd by bringing out Sam Fender, with whom she has a #1 single in the U.K., breaking records for the longest-running number-one single in U.K. chart history. As the screams amplified, Olivia smirked like she knew what she was doing. All around, people clutched their chests just like Olivia did on stage, and they sang their hearts out to “Rein Me In,” every word already easily memorized.
What is love to Olivia Dean? By her own account, it’s confusing and scary, but it’s also beautiful, and it’s a practice you have to teach yourself, a practice she wants the world to learn too. In-between songs she urged the crowd to read Bell Hooks, a philosopher who wrote All About Love, and even quoted Hooks, repeating her well-known line that the “truest way to love someone is to want them to be the best version of themselves.” She then stared out at the thousands of people before her and told us, personally, as if looking into each of our hearts, that every one of us deserves that. Though a couple thousand people separated me from her, and my view was mostly through the side screens, it felt like she was my best friend hyping me up in the women’s bathroom, my spiritual guide through the hard times in life.
It was a concert that spurs plenty of reflection but also beauty, creating joy out of heartbreak, finding beauty from pain, and smiling through it all. Olivia Dean’s smile was heard through her voice, a warm glow of gratitude, apparent even when I couldn’t see her on screen. In this way, it felt natural when the disco ball dropped and bedazzled everything around her, sparkling just like she does. Throughout the night she picked up various bedazzled hand-held shakers, changed into two different sparkling dresses, danced with sequined backup singers, and spun around the stage, flicking her wrist in joy.
If any lesson was to be taken away from the show, it’s that love is not any one thing, and love, to Olivia Dean, also means gratitude. She gave credit where credit’s due to past lovers and experiences she says she can’t regret—since, as she said, “any time you fall in love is a time well spent"—and to her grandma, Carmen, who immigrated to the UK from the Caribbean, allowing Olivia Dean to have the opportunities she does today. She prefaced the song from her first album, "Carmen," named after her grandma, with a story of how she fought to get to where she is today, even saying, "We're just people! I don’t know why we’re so afraid of each other!” further preaching love as a simple acceptance.
The hour-long set ended with “Man I Need,” celebrating with a shower of fireworks as she smiled and closed her eyes, giving herself the moment to love, to experience, and to take it all in with all of us. As I fell in line with the rest of the crowd trying to squeeze our way out of the festival grounds, I felt as though I’d learned a very important lesson in love and gratitude, and I also felt as though Olivia Dean was my very own close, personal (and very wise) friend.
