Running to The Art of Loving

by Ebun Lawore, Staff Writer

A few weeks ago, British singer-songwriter Olivia Dean released her highly anticipated sophomore album, The Art of Loving. A few weeks ago, I decided to get back into running. 

Olivia Dean is one of those artists who is extremely, hella, mega famous, but I have heard a concerningly small number of Oberlin students speak about her. So I have decided to cut out my cardboard sign and forcibly preach the gospel to you all. I have also decided to do it while running. In my experience, the easiest way to know if an album is good is if you can subject yourself to torture while listening to it. So my journalistic tendencies found me on a treadmill in South gym, preparing myself for running to all 35 minutes of The Art of Loving.

The album begins with the title track, which is nothing more than a prelude.  It is an extremely beautiful prelude, however, the gaps of silence between the soft piano, bird chirps, strings, and vocals, allowed me to still hear my feet pounding heavily on the treadmill. The song still served its purpose, with the lyrics “It’s the art of loving/it wasn’t all for nothing/yeah, you taught me something,” preparing me for the album to come.

A smooth bend in the guitar then led me into the lead single “Nice to Each Other”. The copious amount of TikTok  marketing that this song received over the summer surprisingly didn’t stop me from being excited to hear it for the one billionth time. In fact I even felt…energized. My strides synchronized with the beat, and the combination of the airy and dreamy instrumentals with her powerful voice declaring “I don’t want a boyfriend,” felt like an injection of dopamine in my brain. One could say that runner’s high came early, and I flew through those three and a half minutes of the run. 

“Lady Lady”, didn’t fully keep the momentum up. There was a build up I desired in the chorus that was never fully satisfied, despite how much I enjoyed hearing her beautiful vocal stacks saying “that lady lady, she’s the man.”

The Art of Loving sets a high standard for itself with outstandingly moving tracks such as the aforementioned “Nice to Each Other”, but also disappoints you with the few tracks that are still incredible, but lack a specific punch. When the punch was lacking, my legs suffered.

I struggled to run through the predictability of “Close  Up”, whose instrumental seems like one that could be re-used by any popular soul artist of the last two decades. At this point, I was ten minutes into the run, but I feared the next 25. I had another moment of fear during “Something Inbetween”. At this point, my stomach was in pain but I felt the need to push through for the purpose of this article, and the song didn’t help. The pro-situationship propaganda that she alluded to before in “Nice to Each Other”, did not work as well in this song. Lyrics like “I’m not your all or nothing/ I’m more/can we still be something inbetween,” made me uncomfortable, and probably contributed to my running induced stomachache.

However my hatred for situationships does not equate to a hatred for this album. The Art of Loving’s most powerful moments were surprisingly in its saddest songs. Olivia Dean may seem like a ray of sunshine, but if you listen close she’s been through some shit. “Let Alone the One You Love” got to me at the half-way point of my run, and single-handedly gave me the strength to keep going. The raw and authentic emotion that she poured into this ballad is unmatched, and all she needed to show it was a magical gospel instrumental, and female rage. The person she’s describing who “tried to keep [her] small” felt like an opponent that I could only defeat if I ran faster and stronger.

“Loud” served as a showcase for Dean’s incredible vocal ability. It’s the kind of song that makes you think “wow, there really is no one who can sing as good as this.” As the song suggests, her pain was loud as she sang “and you weren’t allowed to come around and throw my heart about.” She was hurting, but I was hurttinnggg. My stomach was fighting me towards the end of this album.

What truly carried me through the end of The Art of Loving is the classic Olivia Dean positive spirit. She could sing anything with a fun beat and it would make me smile. “So Easy to Fall in Love” is just three minutes of her gassing herself up in the most lovable way possible. Only Olivia Dean could say “I’m the perfect mix of Saturday Night and the rest of your life,” and people would only continue to love her more.

I now had ten minutes left in the run. My legs were tired, my stomach was churning, but somehow I continued to run faster due to the sounds of “Baby Steps”. Ironically, the lyrics applied to my situation, saying, “I’m taking b-b-b-baby steps/I won’t fall back if I fall forwards.” I know that the song is actually about self-love, but in my exhaustion, it felt like a warm hug and a whisper in my ear saying “You’ve got this.”

“A Couple Minutes” was a continuation of lyrics that strangely applied to this treacherous run, saying, “Only have a couple minutes and we're going back to real life.” The vintage soul instrumental felt in conversation with Dean’s angelic vocals in a way I had yet to hear on the album, and brought me back to that floating feeling that I initially had during “Nice to Each Other”.

I cooled down during the final track “I’ve Seen It”. This was certainly the simplest song on the album, with the main instruments being Dean’s singular vocals combined with some Elliot Smith-like guitar picking. The song calmed my heart rate along with the slowing pace of the treadmill.

The Art of Loving is truly a journey, one with hills and valleys (much unlike the experience of running on a treadmill, where you sweat in one spot for 35 minutes). But this album’s diversity of topics, beautiful instrumentals, and stunning showcase of Dean’s voice, definitely made this run much more bearable.