During her final performance of four shows at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday (Aug. 18), Olivia Dean opened up to fans about experiencing a difficult breakup and the book that helped her navigate the emotional period.
While speaking with the crowd, the singer praised the late bell hooks’ 1999 book All About Love: New Visions, describing it as a meaningful source of comfort and perspective.
“I had just been through a pretty bad breakup, and I had come back to bell hooks, which if you haven’t read bell hooks, it’s All About Love,” she said. “That’s my book club recommendation for everybody. And it gave me this new perspective on how I should look at loving in my life. That it could be the skill that you can get better at and work on and figure out how to be better to other people.”
Dean explained that hooks’ work completely changed the way she viewed love and helped restore her optimism about relationships.
“She has this definition of love in the book and she goes… To love another person in your life — and that doesn’t even have to be romantically; that could be a friend, a family member, just to truly love someone else — is to want them to be the best version of themselves. It changed my life because I realized suddenly that I deserve that kind of love and I want you to know, New York, that you deserve that kind of love too.”
In All About Love, hooks highlights psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s definition of love, describing it as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
Dean recently completed a four-show run at Madison Square Garden as part of her The Art of Loving Live tour. She is set to conclude the North American leg of the tour later this month before traveling to Australia and New Zealand in October.
The tour supports her 2025 album of the same name, which received strong reviews and reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart.
