Olivia Dean: Just Who We Need

If you were on Instagram in late-summer 2025, it didn’t take long to hear the retro-inspired, yet fresh, new sound from British pop/neo-soul singer, Olivia Dean. After hearing mere snippets, it was a must for me to start delving into Dean’s previous work and current promotional material to learn more about, and hear more from, this artist who exudes an authentic love for what she does. Here are just a few performances from Dean that prove she is exactly who we need in music, now, into 2026, and beyond.

Dive In

Appearing on the Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2024, Dean and her band deliver a jazzier version of the track, “Dive,” from her 2023 debut album, Messy. Dean’s vocal showcases a maturity well beyond her years. Even how she performs is polished, particularly for someone so young; take note of how she gracefully uses her hands to sell some of the lyrics (“I’m a tidal wave of question marks, and you’re just surfing”; “Maybe it’s the magic in the wine”). And through her playful moves at the mic stand, and overall aura, she reminds you that she’s “feeling beautified.” Let this performance of “Dive” wash over you.

Spot(ify) On

The phrase, “breakout hit” definitely applies to Dean’s “Man I Need,” the catchy single that almost seems to be the audio equivalent of a strut. The flirty track captures the early stages of romantic interest, when one is wondering, and wanting to discover more, about the other. In the clip below, Dean and the guys perform at the Spotify Music Studios’ Live Room in Los Angeles, for an intimate performance, filled, in part, with Dean delivering the joy and excitement that comes with new love.

Nice and Easy (Listening)

With “Nice to Each Other,” there’s something about this song, perhaps it’s the pacing, the bass line, and/or the start of its second verse (“Meet me on the mountaintop/I’ll be in the shallow end”) that evoke a smooth Fleetwood Mac feel. In the below concert clip, Dean (channeling a bit of windblown, late ’70s-era Diana Ross and a tambourine-playing Stevie Nicks) performed the single at the Shepherds Bush Empire venue in London, to a crowd of fans singing along to every lyric, months before her second album, The Art of Loving, was released, solidifying that Dean’s popularity was rising quickly.

Safe to say: Dean is music’s newest superstar. (She really should just start picking out her GRAMMY-night dress.) Hope you enjoyed this sampling of clips that demonstrates Dean’s refreshing, and rare, ability to sound just as great live as she does on recordings. The Art of Loving is out now, and be sure to check out Dean’s newest single, and video for, the Bacharach/Warwick-inspired, “So Easy (To Fall In Love),” where she plays a modern-day cupid. To extend the Bacharach/Warwick connection: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” as well as the sweet sound of 2025’s best new artist, Olivia Dean.

The Pop Zeal Project (Track 82): Jennifer Hudson: “Let It Be” (Hope For Haiti Now)

Arguably one of the best pop songs ever written, The Beatles’ “Let It Be” will forever be played when questions about life are easy to ask, yet the answers hard to find. Jennifer Hudson’s impassioned remake of this 1970 Lennon-McCartney track was created for the “Hope for Haiti Now” benefit telethon, which was organized to raise aid after a 2010 earthquake devastated the country. (Here it’s 11 years later and Haiti is recovering from yet another earthquake that just recently occurred.) Hudson takes the track to church, especially towards the end, with the backing vocalists providing angelic support. Hip-hop group, and “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” house band, The Roots supply the musical accompaniment, keeping the traditional guitar riff and Billy Preston-style electric keys. Both The Beatles and Hudson versions are equally soulful: the original tender, touching and subtle, with emphasis more on lyrical delivery and a larger rock-guitar sound, while Hudson’s cover, which provides heartfelt sincerity, is focused more on vocal expression. To delve further into the masterful Beatles original, click here.

Time Passages: Musical Signposts in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights

Music. Score.

For 1997’s Boogie Nights, director Paul Thomas Anderson used music as a “scene partner.” Early on, ‘70s soul (“Best of My Love”), pop (“Brand New Key”), funk (“Jungle Fever”), rock (“Spill the Wine”) and disco (“Boogie Shoes”) represented the frivolity of the sexually liberated era.

Soundtrack on Capitol Records.

“Jack Horner, filmmaker.”

Set amid the production of pre-A.I.D.S. adult films, Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner is the creator of “exotic pictures,” which were shot on film at that time, lending, as Horner would argue, artistic credibility.

Far Gone

While his “family” of fragile performers are kept close, it literally takes just a few seconds before the countdown to 1980 for Boogie Nights to go from glory days to gory nights, with William H. Macy’s Little Bill committing a series of disturbingly matter-of-fact violent acts at a New Year’s Eve party. It’s also Horner’s “wife” and “kids” descending into drug addiction, and the arrival of a new “cheap” format known as videotape, that signify the start of the downward spirals.

Bad Vibrations

Anderson begins to add harmless ‘80s pop into seriously unsettling scenarios to create further disconnect, and to convey a non-sexual loss of innocence for Mark Wahlberg’s Eddie Adams and John C. Reilly’s Reed Rothchild. (Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” have never quite sounded the same since.) Yet Anderson’s most effective use of music is the faint, pulsating bell chime that serves as a warning that the past has come back to haunt Adams. His Dirk Diggler alter ego resorting to back-alley exhibitions like the ones he did as a dishwasher in the Valley in ’77.

Rolling in the Deep

However, this ominous alarm is at its most anxiety-inducing during a scene involving Horner and Heather Graham’s “Rollergirl” in a limousine joy ride with a random guy as part of a new adult series, to be recorded on grainy videotape no less. Boogie Nights’ cinematographer, Robert Elswit shoots part of this scene as if the viewer is looking through the videocamera’s viewfinder, bringing us into the backseat, watching the moment Brandy’s past comes back to haunt her as well.

Amber Waves of Pain

It also marks the beginning of Brandy’s future that may play out like Julianne Moore’s Amber Waves (Maggie as she’s known from her previous life as wife and mother) and Don Cheadle’s Buck, both of whom deal with public scrutiny as they attempt to rebuild non-porn private lives. The “heyday” has reached The End, or more fittingly, its climax.