It’s so easy to fall in love with Olivia Dean. It seems as if she has been everywhere this past year: performing on Saturday Night Live, winning best new artist at the Grammys and an armful of Brits, on the soundtrack to the latest Bridget Jones movie. Even before I’d pressed play on her smash album, The Art of Loving, I’d heard so many of its songs – the No 1 single Man I Need, the multi-platinum-selling Nice to Each Other and So Easy (To Fall in Love) – in coffee shops, on TikTok videos of girls cleaning their houses and Instagram stories of newlyweds doing their first dance.
There’s something addictive about her rich, treacly voice. It’s universal, the kind of rare substance you want to give your grandma a bump of because you know she’d enjoy it just as much. It’s the reason she’s sold out two nights at Rod Laver arena (capacity 14,000), the first stop on the Australian leg of her world tour, just one year after her last Melbourne show at the 2,000-cap Forum.
