Olivia Dean’s latest album, Art of Loving, isn’t just an epic playlist; it’s a full, thought-out therapy session wrapped in music.
WHO spoke with Lyla Connolly, Associate Professional Clinical Counselor, who has explored the way Olivia has taken the world by storm through her own work.
With lyrics that hit so close to home, Olivia turns heartbreak, love, and all the messy in-betweens into what Lyla calls “a full-blown therapy session set to music.”
The Man I Need singer has essentially created a musical encyclopedia of moments that make us stop and think, yep, I’ve been there too, creating a pool of shared experiences and proving, like good artists do, that we’re all navigating the chaos of love together.
Lyla takes a deep dive into the common themes that arise within her own clients. And we are sure that some of these (or all of them) will resonate with some moments throughout your own dating life.
“One part of us says, ‘I love you. I want connection.’ But another part goes, ‘Wait! Connection has been painful before. Are you going to leave me? Can you hold me? I need self-protection.’”
Tracks like Close Up capture this push and pull perfectly: “How do you get close to someone you keep out of reach? Where does that leave me?” It’s basically every avoidant-vs-anxious attachment battle ever, but set to beats you actually want to dance to.
Then there’s Something Inbetween, which tackles that eternal relationship struggle: intimacy vs. individuality. Olivia sings, “I’m not leaving, just feel tightly squeezed in. Love needs breathing.”
The translation? You can love someone hard without losing yourself in the process.
Similarly, in Let Alone the One You Love, she sings, “If you knew me at all, you wouldn’t try to keep me small,” putting into words the very real tension between staying authentic and staying attached, something Lyla sees in her clients every day.
“As a therapist, I spend my days sitting across from clients in the thick of these paradoxes. The reach for intimacy, and the withdrawal from just that. The desire to be known at a cellular level, and to tremble at the very idea of that level of vulnerability and exposure,” Lyla shared.
But the thing with heartbreak is that it, too, eventually gets a glow-up.
In Baby Steps, Olivia reminds us, “I’ll be my own pair of safe hands. It’s not the end, it’s the making of.”
At the end of the day, Olivia Dean’s album reminds us that love isn’t neat, tidy, or predictable and that’s exactly what makes it so captivating (or, let’s be honest, sometimes pure chaos)
Her songs capture the full spectrum of what it means to be human in love. As Lyla Connolly sums it up, “The Art of Loving captures how tenuous, raw, and alive love really is… and the best part? “We’re not alone in love’s contradictions.”
