Sometimes artists just spell it out for you. “I’m very pro-comfort zone,” singer-songwriter Olivia Dean told Elle, promoting her new album The Art Of Loving and its sleepy sleeper hit “Man I Need,” which she’ll surely perform this weekend in her Saturday Night Live debut. The single, already a #1 hit in the UK, recently went top 5 in the United States as well. That’s maybe a little surprising numerically — the upper echelons of the charts are still hoarded stubbornly by the Taylor Swifts of the world — but the single’s appeal is obvious: a head-bobbing love song made for early-evening wedding dances, while the parents are still up. The percussion is a homage to “The Way You Make Me Feel,” while Dean’s vocal line do-si-dos with the piano hook to “Cherish.” The song’s about crushing, of course — or, more precisely, setting a crushy, carefree mood: “Bossa nova on all night — it’s like a kind of alchemy.” That line doubles as a sneaky promo for Dean’s own brand of good-mood music; it sounds crafted and A/B tested as a soundbite for one of her many preternaturally poised media appearances.
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