Olivia Dean quits Britain for LA as music chiefs search to make her the ‘modern-day Mariah Carey’
She’s the first British musical megastar export since Dua Lipa.
Now Olivia Dean is packing up and leaving the gloom of London behind to relocate to Los Angeles, where industry supremos are ready to make her into the ‘modern day Mariah Carey‘.
The Tottenham-born 26-year-old, who won the Best New Artist prize at the Grammy Awards earlier this month, will join forces with the world’s best producers.
Plans are afoot for the singer to move to Tinseltown at the end of her UK concert tour, with label bosses believing her career can reach ‘a whole new level’.
They think she can become the next Ms Carey, who has sold more than 300 million records during her 35-year career.
In an interview last year, Ms Dean appeared to rule out a move to the US West Coast, saying she found it too isolating because of its car culture.
She told Nylon magazine she thought LA was ‘very A to B’: ‘I like the middle…. What’s going to happen on the way? Who am I going to bump into?’
She added: ‘There’s such a culture of being observed [in LA], and I can’t live my life that way.’
Olivia Dean (pictured), the Tottenham-born 26-year-old who won the Best New Artist prize at the Grammy Awards earlier this month, will join forces with the world’s best producers in LA
They think she can become the next Mariah Carey (pictured), who has sold more than 300 million records during her 35-year career
But an industry source told The Mail on Sunday that the singer had been persuaded to make the jump.
‘Olivia’s been convinced that the move to LA will be beneficial to her career,’ they said.
‘The plan now is to decamp to LA. She’s also been told she’ll come to love life there, and that first impressions are not always right.
‘Olivia will complete all her remaining tour dates, maybe take a brief rest, and then make the move out there to start work on some new music.’
Ms Dean’s The Art Of Loving is the longest-running No 1 album by a British female this decade.
Released in October last year, it now boasts seven non-consecutive weeks at the top, meaning it has comfortably surpassed Adele’s 30, which spent five consecutive weeks at the summit in 2021.
The star – who is up for five gongs at the forthcoming Brit Awards at the end of the month – is the first British performer to win Best New Artist at the Grammys since Dua Lipa in 2019.
One of the factors believed to be behind her change of mind about LA is the non-stop praise she has received for her Grammy performance, including from several top vocal coaches.
Ms Dean grew up in the London borough of Haringey, where her English father introduced her to the soulful singer-songwriter world of Al Green and Carole King.
Her Jamaican-Guyanese barrister mother was a fan of 1990s neo-soul singers such as Lauryn Hill and Angie Stone.
