Olivia Dean is from Hackney, London, and by 2025 she had moved from Mercury Prize-shortlisted debut to UK number-one album with The Art of Loving , which she described as an exploration of love in all its forms: romantic, familial, the craft of loving as a practice. "A Couple Minutes" sits in that frame: a song about what you can do with a small amount of time when you are present in it. Her voice is one of the more immediately distinctive in UK pop: warm, clear, and precise in a way that comes from genuine classical training without sounding classical. She can do intimate and she can do large, and she knows which register each song requires. "A Couple Minutes" is a quieter moment on the record, which gives it a specific weight. She won Best New Artist at the 68th Grammy Awards in February 2026. We had her on this page well before that. The moment was coming.
Olivia Dean