“Man I Need” by Olivia Dean

"Man I Need" was the third song English singer-songwriter Olivia Dean pulled from her second album, The Art of Loving, landing on 15 August 2025, and it turned her into a star on both sides of the Atlantic. She wrote it with Tobias Jesso Jr. and producer Zach Nahome, who plays nearly everything else: bass, drums, electric guitar, percussion and synthesizer, while Dean sings lead and adds piano, keyboards and synth of her own. Charlie Holmes mixed it.

Critics loved how it blends pop, R&B and gospel, and so did everybody else. It gave Dean her first number one in the UK and her first American chart entry, climbing to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and it topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Iceland and Flanders. The Brit Awards nominated it for Song of the Year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.