Why Olivia Dean is Britain’s big hope at the 2026 Grammy Awards

UK culture is cool again in the States. Hamnet is vying for the Oscars, Adolescence is still a darling of the TV world, Harry Styles is playing 30 nights at Madison Square Garden… Now another British export is poised to triumph on the international stage: Olivia Dean, who’s competing in the coveted Best New Artist category at the Grammys. She’s one of the most exciting British prospects in years, not least because she’s managed that rarest of feats and broken the US, with just two albums to her name. And she’s managed to do it while maintaining a clear sense of individuality, a classic soul sound combined with sharp, pertinent lyrics about modern love.

Nominated after the runaway success of her second album, 2025’s The Art of Loving, the 26-year-old Dean has fast become one of the UK’s biggest music exports. The London-born Brit School graduate has been on a flawless run from fresh-faced newcomer to established star, taking in film soundtracks (the optimistic “It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) and high-profile appearances at Wimbledon, film premieres and sitting in the front row for top designers at London Fashion Week. Before last year, she had modest success with her debut album Messy – a luxurious work full of introspective musings on relationships, identity and love. It was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2023 (won by jazz group Ezra Collective, with whom she’s also collaborated), placing at No 4 on the UK charts. So far, so good. Next, she and her team at Capitol Records (backed by the wider major label, Universal) built a studio in a renovated east-London house, “the House of Loving”, where she holed up for two months working on her second album.

Upon its release she clocked three simultaneous Top 10 singles, making her the first British female solo artist to do so since Adele back in 2021. Her arena tour proved to be one of this year’s hottest tickets; the first two dates at London’s O2 Arena sold out in minutes, as did the next two that were added. The Art of Loving itself is brilliant, tip-toeing a line between breezy and profound by melding Dean’s inviting tones with lyrics that tap into her generation’s conflicted feelings around love, romance and communication. “Nice to Each Other” (my personal favourite over the bigger hit, “Man I Need”) is a fantastic, gentle riposte to the kind of man who loves to dub women the hysterical ones, while getting all worked up over “what we are”. She encourages him to “meet me on the mountaintop/ I’ll be in the shallow end/ And wait for you to call it off/’Cause I don’t want a boyfriend.”

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“Man I Need” is excellent too, light and full of sunshine, while the exquisite torch song “Loud” emulates Adele’s James Bond theme “Skyfall” with those tantalising key changes, as Dean calls out the man who ghosted her: “And you weren’t allowed/ To come around and throw my heart about/ To turn me on just to turn me down/ And everything’s unspoken now/ I’m out, the silence is so loud.” Orchestral strings add elegance without feeling overblown, and quickly give way to the pared-back sound of Dean’s upright piano, her parting words: “I understand if you changed your mind about me/ But all you had to do was say.”

Around the time her tour went on sale, I saw a few TikToks from pop commentators questioning how Dean had blown up the way she had, seemingly with no “viral” singles (this was before “Nice to Each Other” and “Man I Need” really took off). One thing I’m convinced had a hand in it was her spots opening for rock singer Sam Fender, including at his huge London Stadium show in June, when they also released their yearning duet, “Rein Me In”. Some raised eyebrows at the choice – how would Dean’s sweet-voiced soul pair with Fender’s socially sharp rock’n’roll? To me, though, it was a genius move that placed her in front of Fender’s very engaged fanbase, who happen to be buying more music than most (his latest album, the Mercury Prize-winning People Watching, was the fastest-selling vinyl album of the century by a British artist and the biggest-selling UK vinyl of 2025).

Long before that, though, Dean was grafting steadily, honing her craft both in the studio and onstage. At Montreux Jazz Festival in 2023, I was blown away by her gorgeous rendition of early single “Dive” for The Independent’s Music Box sessions, as well as her sheer professionalism and artistry. She commands a room, enjoying an easy chemistry with her band and offering glimpses of the joy she takes in music with the flash of a grin or an ad lib. It’s a rare gift, to make what she does look so effortless.

Dean is, surely, the perfect Grammy winner. There’s a timelessness to her music that screams longevity, rather than a flash-in-the-pan jumping on current pop trends. She’s a huge commercial success (another big tick for Grammy voters) but artistically excellent, too; her songwriting has the capacity to start conversations, while also selling out stadiums. In terms of her competition this year, we have her fellow Brit, Lola Young. While she went viral with her single “Messy”, Young has yet to achieve the same kind of eye-widening stats as Dean, and her own lyrics (which I love) might be considered a touch too explicit for those notoriously prudish judges.

US pop star Addison Rae could be a contender, though again lacks the commerciality that judges love. Alex Warren can claim one of the biggest songs of 2025, “Ordinary”, but it was also, well, very ordinary, particularly in comparison to his fellow nominees. It would also be quite the coup for Dean to win, as it would continue a current eight-year streak of Best New Artist being claimed by women. The last male act to win was Chance the Rapper in 2017; since then it has been won by Canadian singer Alessia Cara, alt-pop queen Billie Eilish, rapper Megan Thee Stallion, pop-rock singer Olivia Rodrigo, jazz singer Samara Joy, R&B singer Victoria Monét and, most recently, pop star Chappell Roan. A win for Dean would be a suitable reminder of how women continue to dominate pop, while also marking the first British triumph in that category since Dua Lipa in 2019.

Really, it should be so easy for the Grammys to fall in love with her – Dean made an entire album, after all, teaching us how to do it.