If there\u2019s a crucial message to be distilled from the collected pop songs made by young women in the last few years, it\u2019s that boys can kick rocks.\n<\/p>\n
The men these young artists find themselves entangled with, they sing, are idiots<\/a> and vampires<\/a>. They\u2019re dudes who take you on a date and don\u2019t actually ask you a single question<\/a>, or they treat you like \u201cs*** on [their] shoes<\/a>.\u201d They\u2019re just manchildren,<\/a> in the parlance of Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s latest hit, who can\u2019t take care of themselves, flailing through life. Often these insults are sung less in anger than with what sounds like humorous, even self-deprecating exasperation, guffawing at the sorry state of what\u2019s available to them as women in their 20s trying to date in an era when major news outlets consistently<\/a> print<\/a> thinkpieces asking if \u201cmen are okay.\u201d \u201cMaybe I can fix him?\u201d Olivia Rodrigo asked, with a laugh, on 2023’s \u201cget him back!\u201d after listing a litany of faults (\u201can ego, a temper and a wandering eye\u201d) an irredeemable but irresistible ex-boyfriend possessed. Apparently that\u2019s all some girls can hope for.\n<\/p>\n Olivia Dean hopes for more. At first glance, the 26-year-old English singer, whose 2023 debut album Messy was shortlisted for the U.K.\u2019s Mercury Prize, shares little in common with pop peers who\u2019ve found success in saltily degrading potential suitors. The artist hails originally from the BRIT school, the prestigious London music school that also produced Adele and RAYE, and Dean\u2019s work plays with the same familiar, brassy English soul influences those artists pull from. Her songs about love<\/a> and even romantic ambivalence<\/a> have an airy, seductive simplicity, her warm voice built for first dances at weddings and blockbuster rom-com montages featuring the lead actors falling in love over candlelit dinners and respectable small plates. And even when she\u2019s ragging on someone who gets on her nerves \u2014 admittedly \u201cpicking a fight<\/a>\u201d \u2014 Dean doesn\u2019t sound like she\u2019s fighting one bit. She sounds cool and collected, resigned to however the situation might play out.\n<\/p>\n Dean\u2019s \u201cMan I Need,\u201d which was her first song to chart on Billboard’s Hot 100 and has been climbing steadily, sits in the same universe as so many of her peers\u2019 songs about dating men of varying degrees of unavailability. But there\u2019s zero snark here \u2014 no frustration, no rage. A self-described song about \u201cknowing how you deserve to be loved and not being afraid to ask for it,\u201d \u201cMan I Need\u201d is playful and light, its bouncy, jazzy pop piano setting the tempo as Dean sings of trying to reign in a lover who is keeping her at a distance. \u201cJust come be the man I need,\u201d Dean sings. \u201cTell me you got something to give, I want it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n On the surface, \u201cMan I Need\u201d fits into that growing catalog of \u201cget it together, boys!\u201d-themed pop hits helmed by fed-up young women. But it doesn\u2019t communicate the same sass or intensity as of her peers\u2019 songs in that space, and maybe because of that, it lacks the same feeling of real, human investment. There\u2019s something about \u201cMan I Need\u201d that reminds me of a cardboard cut-out, like the song is merely an advertisement for its earnest message rather than an embodiment of it. Like I could flick my finger at its edge and it might topple over in the lobby of a movie theater. That might be because it sort of sounds like a stage musical number, the groundwork of what could be a real life conversation dramatized into a sprightly, transparently retro performance. That the song\u2019s music video<\/a> takes place on a soundstage (as her other videos have<\/a>) with the innards of some sort of production exposed, Dean dancing in front of hand-painted backdrops and moving sets pushed in and out of frame by a multiplying group of handsome men, only emphasizes the music\u2019s self-aware facade.\n<\/p>\n But \u201cMan I Need\u201d also feels like cardboard because Dean\u2019s demands are thin. She just wants him to talk to her \u2014 \u201cwhatever the type of talk it is,\u201d really \u2014 and at one point non-committedly drops that she\u2019s already given him \u201cthe time and the place, so don\u2019t be shy.\u201d In the song\u2019s mushiest greeting card line, she allows that \u201cI kinda like it when you call me wonderful.\u201d Despite being billed as a song that isn\u2019t afraid of expression, \u201cMan I Need\u201d hedges, takes the easy way out, settles for sentimentality. Of the singles released from Dean\u2019s new sophomore album The Art of Loving, I\u2019m more partial to \u201cNice to Each Other,\u201d which, despite its similarly peppy instrumentation, plays like it was written by a person actually immersed in the realities of a relationship, this one casual but not without emotions or stakes involved. \u201cWe could be nice to each other, wrong for each other, right for each other,\u201d she sings, sitting in the relationship\u2019s shifting ambiguity. It\u2019s a simple, swaying chorus, and when Dean sings it, with the echoes of backup singers behind her, the song sounds like it could have been penned for a ’60s girl group. It also doesn\u2019t sound like taking the easy way out. Copyright 2025 NPR <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there\u2019s a crucial message to be distilled from the collected pop songs made by young women in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-178864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/p>\n