The Art of Loving album cover by Olivia Dean

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2025 · From the album The Art of Loving

Baby Steps

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03:17 Runtime

The reading

A breakup song about relearning how to be alone, told as the small, deliberate motions of someone teaching themselves to walk again

02 · Interpretation

Olivia Dean's 'Baby Steps': Learning to Be Your Own Safe Hands

E Editorial Desk Jun 2, 2026

Most breakup songs reach for the dramatic gesture: the slammed door, the burned letter, the night out that turns into a bender. Olivia Dean's 'Baby Steps,' released in September 2025 as part of 'The Art of Loving,' does the opposite. It's a song about the unglamorous middle of moving on, the part where you're not heartbroken enough to cry and not healed enough to feel free, just walking around your own apartment trying to remember how to do it by yourself.

The opening image sets the tone with unusual precision. A rear-view mirror, Dean reminds us, makes things look closer than they are; the ex she's describing feels nearby but is, in truth, worlds away. It's a small piece of optical honesty that reframes the rest of the song. What follows isn't denial or longing so much as a clear-eyed inventory of what's actually gone.

The second verse is where the specifics land. She used to be the one charging at ten percent while a partner plugged her straight back in. Now there's no one to text when a plane lands, no one to call when it's taking off. Dean picks the two most mundane moments of modern intimacy, the bookends of a flight, and lets their absence stand in for everything bigger. The metaphor of the dying phone is gentle and exact: she wasn't dependent in some grand romantic sense, she just had a reliable source of power, and now she doesn't.

The chorus answers that loss with a piece of choreography rather than a declaration. "Right, left," she counts off, like a parent teaching a toddler. "I'll be my own pair of safe hands." The image of becoming the adult who catches you is sharp; it acknowledges that being held was the thing she'll miss, and that the job is now hers. "It's not the end, it's the making of" reads less like a slogan than something she's repeating to convince herself, which is exactly how those phrases tend to work in real life.

The second verse domesticates the project. Friday nights out used to end with someone else home and the lights on; now she'll be the one flipping the switch when she walks in. The line about roses on the shelf, and the resolve that "this house gon' love itself," is the song's small thesis. Self-care here isn't a spa day or a manifesto, it's buying yourself flowers because no one else will, and deciding that the building you live inside counts as worth tending to.

The bridge offers the closest thing to a mantra: she won't fall back, and if she falls forward, at least she has that. It's a modest claim, and the modesty is the point. Forward motion, even clumsy forward motion, is the only metric she'll allow herself.

Musically, the title's babbled "ba ba ba" doubles as both a baby's first sounds and a hook engineered for memory. Dean has spent her short career writing songs that sound like Sunday morning, with debts to British soul and the kind of jazz-inflected pop that Amy Winehouse made viable for a generation of UK singers who came after her. 'Baby Steps' fits that lane while pulling toward something lighter and more buoyant; the production seems to want you nodding before you've noticed what the song is actually about.

'The Art of Loving' takes its title from Erich Fromm's 1956 book, which argues that love is a practice rather than a feeling that happens to you. 'Baby Steps' is arguably the album's clearest demonstration of that thesis applied inward. The work of loving yourself, in this telling, is not affirmation but admin: turning on the lights, buying the roses, putting one foot in front of the other.

It's a song that may endure precisely because it refuses the big swing. Most listeners will recognise the specific weather it describes, the week after the week after, when nothing is on fire but nothing is fixed either. Dean has written a small, useful piece of music for that stretch.

Themes catalogued

breakup self-sufficiency starting over solitude self-love

Track Info

Released Sep 26, 2025

Album The Art of Loving

Length 03:17

Listen elsewhere

03 · Lyrics

"Baby Steps"

It's funny in the rear view

You're closer than you are

In truth we're worlds apart

I'm used to being near you

When I'm down at ten percent

And you'd plug me straight back in

Now there's no-one to text when the plane lands

Or to call when it's taking off

Right, left

Baby steps

I'll be my own pair of safe hands

It's not the end, it's the making of

Right, left

For now I'm taking

Ba ba ba, baby steps

It's learning how to balance

If I'm out on Friday night

It'll be me turning on the lights

When I come home

But I'll manage

There'll be roses on the shelf

'Cause this house gon' love itself

Yeah, this house gon' love itself

I'm taking

Ba ba ba, baby steps

I won't fall back

If I fall forwards

At least I have that

I'm taking

Ba ba ba, baby steps

Ba ba ba, baby steps (Ba ba ba, baby steps)

Ba ba ba, baby steps (Ba ba ba, baby)

Ba ba ba, baby steps

Lyrics via Google. Copyright belongs to rights holders.

04 · FAQ

Frequently asked

What does 'I'll be my own pair of safe hands' mean in 'Baby Steps'?

It's the song's central promise to herself. Dean is acknowledging that the comfort of being held by someone else is gone, and reframing it as a job she can take on. The image of 'safe hands' suggests both catching and steadying, the kind of care she used to receive from a partner.

Is 'Baby Steps' by Olivia Dean about a real breakup?

The lyrics describe the aftermath of a relationship in concrete domestic detail, from texts about flights to who turns on the lights at home. Dean hasn't framed it publicly as a literal autobiography, but the specificity, especially the phone-battery metaphor and the empty apartment, reads as drawn from lived experience rather than invention.

What does the line about the rear-view mirror mean?

Dean opens by noting that in the rear view, the ex looks closer than they are, while in truth they're 'worlds apart.' It's a play on the standard warning printed on car mirrors, and it sets up the song's honesty: emotional proximity is an illusion, and the distance is real.

Why does Olivia Dean sing 'this house gon' love itself'?

It reframes self-care as something architectural rather than performative. Instead of declaring she'll love herself, she displaces the work onto the house, which she'll fill with roses and tend to alone. The grammar is deliberately casual, almost spoken, which keeps the line from sounding like a slogan.

How does 'Baby Steps' fit into the album 'The Art of Loving'?

The album takes its title from Erich Fromm's 1956 book, which treats love as a practice you cultivate. 'Baby Steps' is the record's clearest application of that idea to the self: small, repeated actions like turning on lights or buying flowers stand in for the larger project of learning to be alone.

What does 'I won't fall back, if I fall forwards' mean?

It's a modest bridge that distinguishes between two kinds of falling. Going backward would mean returning to the relationship or the old dependency; falling forward, even clumsily, still counts as motion. 'At least I have that' undersells the win on purpose, which is the song's whole tone.

What does 'Baby Steps' sound like musically?

The track keeps to the soulful, jazz-inflected pop lane Dean has worked in since her debut, with a singalong 'ba ba ba' hook that doubles as a nod to the title's infant imagery. The arrangement leans buoyant rather than mournful, which sets up a productive tension with lyrics about being newly alone.

05 · Discography

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Nice To Each Other

2025 · The Art of Loving