So Easy (To Fall In Love)

Most songs about falling in love are told from the position of the one doing the falling. “So Easy (To Fall In Love)” flips it: Dean is the one making the case, laying out — plainly, warmly, without a trace of doubt — exactly why the listener would be lucky to have her. That confidence is the song’s whole personality, and it’s rare enough as a romantic stance in pop that it stands out on its own. Written with Amy Allen, John Ryan, and Max Wolfgang, and produced by Zach Nahome and Ryan with Allen and Wolfgang contributing additional and vocal production respectively, the track leans into a bossa nova pulse — soft brushed percussion, a vocal delivery that lands somewhere between Astrud Gilberto and vintage Motown — that a handful of critics correctly flagged as one of the more committed attempts at that specific sound in recent pop.

Nothing about “So Easy” reaches for a moment the way a lead single usually does; it’s the fourth single from The Art of Loving; the album had already made its case. That’s exactly why it works as well as it does — there’s no strain in it, no sense of a song built to win a chart position rather than to sound good in a room. A No. 5 US Hot 100 peak for a jazz-pop bossa nova cut, on an album stacked with more obviously commercial singles, tells you this one is coasting on quality more than campaign. 8.0/10.

Hero image: Olivia Dean performing at SWR3 New Pop Festival, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2023, by Harald Krichel, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.