Suddenly she was there: the British singer Olivia Dean. She reached a billion streams with her monster hit Man I need and will be in the Ziggo Dome on Saturday. Who is that 27-year-old superstar who toured the United Kingdom in a yellow van six years ago?
Maxime Segers
Show editor
Who would have thought that a girl who was so shy in her childhood would now be on the biggest stages? In any case, Olivia Dean herself did not, but her mother had a predictive gift, it now appears.
She encouraged her 15-year-old daughter to audition for London’s famous Brit School of Performing Arts and Technology, a breeding ground for talent where Adele and Amy Winehouse also learned the tricks of the trade.
That push from her mother turned out to be a good move. Because Olivia Dean has now grown into a world-famous singer and Robbie Williams has even compared her to Whitney Houston.
Named after Lauryn Hill
Olivia Lauryn Dean’s story begins in London, where she was born on March 14, 1999. She is the daughter of a Jamaican-Guyanese mother and a British father. Her grandmother was a Windrush generation migrant (so named after the ship Empire Windrush, which brought the first group of migrants from the Caribbean to the UK in 1948). That’s why she often calls herself “a product of her grandmother’s courage.”
There is something else that plays a major role in her life: music. As a little girl, she knew no better than that there was always music playing at home. In fact, she is named after singer Lauryn Hill, known for the hit, among other things Killing me softly.
It is therefore not surprising that she already sang in a gospel choir at a young age. She already knows that she wants to become a singer, but her shyness is getting in the way. “When I told my mother that I wanted to become a singer, she replied: ‘What? But you’re so shy,’” she reflects in an interview.
Yet as a 15-year-old teenager, Dean follows her mother’s advice: she auditions for the Brit School of Performing Arts and Technology, is accepted and graduates a few years later.
In 2017 she took the first steps in her musical career as a backing singer with the British band Rudimental. But Dean has bigger ambitions. She decides to share covers on YouTube and builds her own following. She also releases some solo work.
Until the corona pandemic breaks out in 2020 and everything is locked down. But the resourceful Dean doesn’t want to give up. She buys a yellow van, converts part of the van into a mobile stage and takes her ‘sunshine from‘ across the UK with her From me to you-tour. The goal? Bringing cheerful music in a gloomy time.
Her debut album will follow in 2023, which will reach number 4 in the British charts. But if they have the number in 2025 Nice to each other releases, she experiences her big breakthrough.
The singer won gold again later that year, in August Man I need. The song has been in first place in the Top 40 in the Netherlands for no less than nine weeks. And it doesn’t stop there: a month later it hits again when Dean releases her second album The art of loving releases, where So easy to fall in love is on. That song also becomes a hit.
Downside of fame
Dean’s life has now been completely turned upside down. While she was a rising star for the general public just a year ago, she is now held in high regard worldwide. And her talent does not go unnoticed. She not only won a Grammy for best newcomer in February, but also emerged as the big winner at the Brit Awards, the most important awards ceremony in the British music industry, with four awards.
At the end of last month, Spotify even revealed that Man I need has reached over a billion streams on Spotify. At the same time, the streaming service announces that Dean is the female artist with the largest increase in global streams on Spotify in the past twelve months.
This overwhelming recognition also has a downside. The singer explains in an interview with magazine Numéro sometimes feeling ‘that her innocence has been taken away from her’, because ‘the whole world is judging her and watching along with her’.
Despite the fame, Dean tries to live a normal life. “People now call me a world star, but at home I’m just the one who cooks the pasta and watches West Ham (an English football club, ed.). Success is great, but it should never be more important than the people who were already there when I was still sleeping in that yellow van.”
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