How Rising Artist Olympia Drew "Dear God" Into Existence

There's a particular kind of conviction that makes great artists. The quiet, immovable kind. The kind that turns down a record deal in Greece, moves to London with next to nothing, and produces an entire debut single entirely in her head before a single studio is ever booked.

That's Olympia. Born Eleni Olympia, raised on a small Mediterranean island, now firmly rooted in London, and entirely on her own terms.

Her debut single "Dear God," out today, arrives like a letter left on a doorstep. It is, by her own description, "a personal, vulnerable letter to God seeking for answers in times of pain." But the song's emotional weight is matched only by the extraordinary process behind it. Unable to use a DAW, Olympia constructed the entire arrangement mentally, bass lines, string melodies, percussion, and conveyed it to musicians by humming, tapping, and singing. A violinist friend flew in from Cyprus, stayed three days, and copied the melodies she sang to him. Those recordings, made on her phone, became the seed of a string quartet.

"I produced the whole track in my head," she says. "Once I had a solid sound in my head, I found the musicians and explained everything by humming, tapping, or singing. That's when it started to come to life."

Built brick by brick, across multiple studios and collaborators, "Dear God" is proof of concept and personal reckoning at once. The influences are worn openly, Donny Hathaway's soul, Etta James's rawness, Freddie Mercury's theatrical conviction - but the voice is unmistakably her own.

Her backstory reads like it was written for the song. She left her island after school to study at Leeds Conservatoire, barely speaking English. She spent her early years in England largely alone, teaching herself the language in a small room, striking up conversations with strangers just to practise. She studied Joni Mitchell and The Beatles not for inspiration alone, but to understand the architecture of English songwriting from the inside out. She reached the final of The Voice of Greece, flying between Leeds and Athens mid-degree, placed third, turned down label interest, and stayed in England anyway.

After graduating in 2022, she moved to London, couch-surfed, worked various jobs, and kept building. "Dear God" is the first single from her debut EP, Have You Ever Been In Love? - written, produced, and arranged entirely by herself.

Follow Olympia on Instagram