British pop-soul singer Olivia Dean's grandmother took her first plane trip at age 18, when she emigrated to the UK from Guyana. Dean poignantly recalled the movement of his song “Carmen” on Tuesday during the first of a two-night performance at the Crypto.com Arena. “My grandmother made me the person I am,” Dean said when introducing the song. “When I was my age, I had four children, one was my mother and now I can 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 UK, a rising reform party may drag the country into the mire of the anti-immigrant far-right. In the United States, ICE has just killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.
Dean made a similar comment at the Grammys in February, where he won New Artist on the same stage. In a broadly sweet, bouncy and gorgeously sung Tuesday set, that sentiment revealed the moral clarity that reinforces her songs about devotion and intimacy. Truly valuing love sometimes means being willing 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 gain global fame in the core of old soul balladry and modern pop style. It's a line with huge, established appeal (Sienna Spiro is already set to be next). However, Dean brought a fresh, easy-going charm to singles like the Hot 100 hit “Man I Need,” a Whitney Houston-caliber hit that heralded an ingeniously emotional record.
With only two studio LPs to his name, Dean covered almost all of them on Tuesday, starting with the flirty but measured “Nice To Each Other.” There he promised “Never say classical things / Only show them.”
Dean's set was full of classical material: pastel woodwinds, bossa nova piano, winking choreography from his fully clothed backing band. Wearing an emerald-hued cocktail dress, she brought a bit of Eartha Kitt's shy purr and Norah Jones' deft sophistication to “So Easy (To Fall In Love).” “It's Not Perfect But It Might Be” evoked the incense-soaked soul of Lauryn Hill, and the live debut of “Something Inbetween” was a singer-songwriter gem. With an update on London's ambitious contemporary jazz scene, he covered Curtis Mayfield's timeless “Move On Up.”
But his perspective is Internet-age cosmopolitan; young but preternaturally wise about self-sufficiency. “Ladies Room” was a lively ode to the sanctity of one's own room; “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 would not be reduced to being easy company for anyone. “I'm 'too much to handle' and 'just back off a little,'” he sang. “Well, I won't allow it, honey… who would do that to a friend, much less the person you love?”
However, what separates Dean from the British pop-soul tradition from which he emerged is the simple fact that he has blows. Irresistible wedding DJ-caliber singles that will have men and women everywhere going from 9 to 90 on the dance floor. The lovelorn “Dive” would make anyone faint in any arm holding it.
Her inevitable closer, “Man I Need,” is the caliber of a song that will outlive her and all of us, a song that will always belong to the lovers yet to come. Let's hope they hear Dean's message about what it takes to protect each other too.
