U.K. pop-soul singer Olivia Dean’s grandmother took her first plane ride at 18, when she emigrated to the U.K. from Guyana. Dean poignantly recalled the move on her song “Carmen” on Tuesday during the first of a two-night run at the Crypto.com Arena . “My Grandmother made me the person I am,” Dean said, introducing the song. “By the time she was my age she had four kids, one was my mum, and now I get to do this.”
“Any immigrant brave enough” to leave their life behind for the benefit of future generations, Dean said, “Deserves to be celebrated.”
That simple, honorable point about the dignity of emigrating remains painfully controversial in Dean’s home country and here. In the U.K., an ascendant Reform party may pull the country deeper into the anti-immigrant far-right mire. In the U.S., ICE just killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.
Dean made a similar point at the Grammys in February, where she won for New Artist on the same stage. In a broadly sweet, vivacious and gorgeously sung set Tuesday, that sentiment revealed the moral clarity that bolsters her songs about devotion and intimacy. To truly value love sometimes means being ready to change your life and fight for it.
Last year, with her second LP “The Art of Loving,” Dean became the latest British woman to earn global fame at the crux of old-soul balladry and modern pop panache. It’s a lane with enormous, established appeal (Sienna Spiro is already winding up to be next). Yet Dean brought a fresh, easy-wearing charm to singles such as the Hot 100 smash “Man I Need,” a Whitney Houston-caliber banger that heralded an artfully emotive record.
With just two studio LPs to her name, Dean covered almost all of them Tuesday, beginning with the flirty yet measured “Nice To Each Other.” There she vowed to “Never say the classic stuff / Just show it.”
Dean’s set was full of classic stuff — pastel-hued horns, bossa nova piano, winking choreo from her full-suited backing band. In an emerald-hued cocktail dress, she brought a bit of Eartha Kitt’s coy purr and Norah Jones’ deft sophistication to “So Easy (To Fall In Love).” “It isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” evoked Ms. Lauryn Hill’s incense-soaked soul, and the live debut of “Something Inbetween” was a singer-songwriterly pearl. With a refresh from the ambitious contemporary London jazz scene, she covered Curtis Mayfield’s ageless “Move On Up.”
But her perspective is internet-era cosmopolitan; young but preternaturally wise about self-reliance. “Ladies Room” was a zippy ode to the sanctity of a room of one’s own; “Time” promised that “It’s up to me to spend my time / I gave you yours, so give me mine.”
On “Let Alone The One You Love,” she made it clear that she wouldn’t be reduced to easy companionship for anyone. “I’m ‘Too much to handle’ and ‘Just dial it back a bit,’” she sang. “Well, I’m not having it, babe … who would do that to a friend, let alone the one you love.”
What separates Dean from the U.K. pop-soul tradition she emerged from, though, is the simple fact that she has hits. Irresistible, wedding-DJ caliber singles that will get men and women, all the world over, from 9 to 90 on the dance floor. The besotted “Dive” would make anyone swoon into whatever arms will have them.
Her inevitable set closer “Man I Need” is the caliber of a track that will outlive her and all of us, a song that will always belong to the lovers yet to come. Let’s hope they listen to Dean’s message about what it takes to protect each other too.
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