14 Juil INTERVIEW – Olivia Dean talks about her first album, her rituals and Bordeaux

Meet a very, very promising young artist.

Version française à retrouver par ici.

Sound of Brit : In three hours’ time, you’ll be on stage. How do you feel before a concert? How do you manage your stress?

Olivia Dean : I love performing. I love singing for people. It’s one of the things that brings me the most joy in life. So I just get excited. I’m not nervous. Just joy.

Sound of Brit : We really enjoyed Messy, your first album, and got a lot of feedback on our review on out website. Can you tell us about the cover?

Olivia Dean : Hmm… Good or bad?? Ahah. In fact, early on in the process of finding the good artwork, we made a big shoot, completely different, and it was going to be a really conceptual cover. And I hated all the photos. They were beautiful photos, but they didn’t represent the music. They weren’t warm. It was too conceptual. And I wasn’t an abstract person. In fact, I’m quite simple, you know? I like people. And the music is soul music. So I gave it all up. My manager told me to stop. And she said, « What are you going to do? Because you have to deliver it in a week. » There were two weeks left and I asked myself if there was already an image that would represent me well at this point in my life. And I found this image of a shooting I’d made two years ago, in black and white, and we put it in colour and changed it to purple, my favourite colour. And that’s it, really. There’s no crazy story. I just thought, I like this picture, that’s all. It’s my face. There was no crazy story !

Sound of Brit : The album ends with the magnificent track Carmen. Was it important for you to end the album with suc eth a powerful track?

Olivia Dean : Yes, I did. Yes, I knew that as soon as I wrote the song. I wanted to dedicate the whole album to my grandmother and, of course, it had to be the closing song, you know, with the band and the jubilant celebration of her life and her legacy and that whole generation and what they brought to the UK. And hopefully that song will be separate from the whole album, you know, whatever happens, I want to make a lot of albums. But this particular song will live on, you know, beyond me and my grandchildren. It’s my grandmother’s voice and it’s there forever, and time is very powerful.

Sound of Brit : Dive was THE big single on the album, a real masterpiece. You played it on the TV show Quotidien, with an audience of millions. What was that like?

Sound of Brit : Yes, I did. I didn’t realise it was such a big show. Someone told me afterwards, because I have family who live in France, that it was something big. It was crazy. It was fun. I didn’t really know what was going on. I got on the plane. They told me: « You’re going to be on the air ». I met everyone there. It was lovely. We played. The audience was there and they were receptive. I don’t know what happened. It just happened. And I said, OK, fine, then I went home!

Sound of Brit : How did you go about writing Messy? Your collaborators, your recording locations, your writing…

Olivia Dean : I’d say it took 18 months from the start, from the moment I said to myself « this is it, I’m making an album » to the delivery of the album. And I’d say that writing the songs is the longest process. I’m very perfectionist when it comes to lyrics and chords. I feel that if the song is good, if you take everything away, you can play it just on the piano. So everything had to be that good for me. The recording process took two or three weeks and then the album was finished. I wrote a lot of the album in a bar in the UK, so I left London to go to my two songwriters’ houses and it was nice to have other perspectives. It was a pleasure to do it. My main aim was to have fun doing it, because I think sometimes you get so caught up in life that you need to be excellent and you forget that you’re living a dream. As I’m in the process of making my first album, I’ll never be able to do that again. So I just had fun. I tried to have fun. It wasn’t always fun. It was stressful. But most of the time I was trying to escape.

Sound of Brit : The need to get out of London to write, or as if it were a way of breathing easier.

Olivia Dean : And that’s exactly what I did. I mean, yes and no, because I did another trip where I left London for a fortnight to isolate myself. You know, that’s what they do in films! I did it once and I wrote that I hadn’t written any good music apart from one song. I wrote that one song, but as for the rest, I was putting too much pressure on myself. So it didn’t really work out. But it got me to the right place and to the right people, you know? Someone made a very good metaphor about writing music. It’s like surfing. You can train yourself to get on the board. If the waves aren’t there, you’re not going to surf today. And that’s the case. If you practise, the waves will come. So I’d say you have to find a balance.

Sound of Brit : What’s your schedule for a day at the festival? Today, for example?

Olivia Dean : I went for a swim in the lake; I don’t swim too far because I’m not a good swimmer. I drink a beer and enjoy the music, chatting to everyone. I’m very relaxed.

Sound of Brit : Do you have any little rituals before going on stage?

Olivia Dean : Of course I do. I have a warm-up routine. I do the same thing every time. About half an hour, 45 minutes, mainly breathing and stretching. It’s more of a mental warm-up, because it’s quite a strange thing to do, actually. If you think about it, you suddenly go from the road to the stage, everyone’s looking at you and suddenly you’re singing. You have to be mentally present for that. Getting my voice ready to sing like crazy, and all that stuff!

Sound of Brit : After playing at Rock en Seine and La Gaité Lyrique, you’ll be back in Paris in September to play at L’Elysée Montmartre; do you have any special memories there?

Olivia Dean : As I said, my family lives in France on my father’s side. So I’ve spent a lot of summers here. And I’ve been to Bordeaux and the surrounding area, you know, I’ve been there many times. So France is a very special place for me. I love Paris. A lot of people still try to get me to practise my French, I’ve spent a lot of time there. And I just think it’s such a lovely, lovely place, you know, it’s a beautiful country.