Olivia Dean is no stranger to personal storytelling, and her latest single, “Touching Toes,” reminds us that love isn’t always big gestures and grand, unreplicable moments but rather the tiny, personal insights that bring a relationship to a place of home.
Floating between gentle jazz-stained melodies and effortless lyricism, Dean lays out a portrait of love taken to its most wholesome, most pristine, the comfort of a known quantity, the mild euphoria of being in the same space, the poetry of mundanity. “He’s around more and more. I had to give him a whole drawer,” she sings with effortless warmth, her velvety vocals floating atop a languid groove. This focus on the mundane causes “Touching Toes” to read like a love song you’ve inhabited before.
As with Dean’s work, “Touching Toes” flourishes in humble grace. The instrumentation is light but rich, leaving plenty of room for her smooth, soulful, and easily emotive voice to take charge. There’s an intimacy to her delivery that renders every lyric as an intimate confession, a private joke, something between two people who just understand each other.
With “Touching Toes,” Olivia Dean is further carving out a space where sincerity and simplicity can shine. It’s a reminder that love isn’t always what we imagine to be explosive chemistry; sometimes, it’s the quiet joy of knowing your partner’s trainers are left by the door.