Oh, the delirious screams that ripped through my house a few months ago when the Olivia Dean tickets were secured. Stupidly, I thought the victors might have nabbed one of the barcoded spoils for me. For a brief moment there, I dared to hope.I’d go alone, I decided. Sway along unselfconsciously in a sea of people more than half my age. I’d wallow in songs such as Nice to each Other, Man I Need, A Couple Minutes and (my favourite) I’ve Seen It. I’d wear my big rain jacket to brave the elements in Dublin’s Marlay Park this weekend. I would not cramp the teenager’s style. I must have been in some kind of Olivia La La Land thinking all of this. Of course there was no ticket forthcoming. No teenager, frantic on a ticket site, is thinking about their mother and the way she might feel about a 26-year-old singer called Olivia Dean. It’s just not the order of things.[ Olivia Dean at Marlay Park: Stage times, set list, ticket information, how to get there and moreOpens in new window ]But that’s the deal with Dean. She subverts the order of things. She is that rare anomaly: a huge pop star who appeals across the generations. It’s so easy to fall in love with her. You can be 16 or 60. You can think your pop music days are over, but then you are beguiled by her voice, smooth like honey, warm like buttered toast. Waylaid by her preternaturally wise words, the kind that make you stop and say: “Who is that? Who is she?” It happened to me with A Couple Minutes. My daughter was singing it, that line about two former lovers meeting “turn around, since when are you smoking now?”. The line is crooned with affectionate, intimate knowing. Dean sings as though she’s in a 1940s jazz club, but her lyrics are shot-through with the sound of right now. She does bossa nova, soaring string arrangements and lyrics that speak to the young and, as eloquently, to the not-so-young. She sings songs that feel almost instantly familiar. She sings, mostly, about love. I’ve Seen It is one of those songs as is Man I Need. They feel as though they’ve always been with us. I’ve Seen It sounds like something Paul McCartney might have written in the 1960s. When Dean heard the recording back for the first time she burst into tears and I can understand why. It’s a deceptively powerful composition about love in all its unknowable forms. “The more you look, the more you find / It’s all around you, all the time / Catches your eye, you blink and then it’s gone.”Dean is a feminist. Her second studio album, The Art of Loving, was inspired by All About Love, the book by US writer bell hooks. It’s Dean’s bible. “The only piece of writing that I’ve read that talks about love as a skill and something that is political, spiritual and healing,” she has said. [ Olivia Dean: ‘Why do I have to be in distress to make good music? Why can’t I just be happy?’ ]Her enthusiasm sends you off searching for quotes from that book: “All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”Great art often comes from childhood trauma, but Dean is a reminder how it can also come from a solid, loving place. Her parents have been together for 30 years. Her mother, Christine, a barrister, was deputy leader of the UK’s Women’s Equality Party; her grandmother came to England from Guyana as part of the Windrush generation. At Glastonbury last year, Dean wore a top decorated with her grandmother’s face. “This song is for my granny … for any immigrant, anyone’s who’s brave enough to move,” she said, introducing her song Carmen.Olivia Dean performs on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury last June. Photograph: Joe Maher/Getty Sometimes we get the artists we need at just the right time. Dean is an antidote to everything that might be ailing us. And if the world is in flames, she is doing her bit to kindle some warmer fires in our hearts. In interviews she talks about self-love and self-work and does so in a grounded way that doesn’t make you cringe. She is fascinated by the concept of music as therapy. She knows an album can be therapeutic. The Art of Loving is that kind of album. Dean says the kind of stuff you want your teenage daughters and sons to hear: “It took time and working on myself to realise that I’m the only one who has to live inside my brain, so I might as well make it a nice place to live. I might as well just love myself … I don’t think that’s narcissistic to say. I’m a good person and I really do feel like somebody will be lucky to fall in love with me.”I’ve been listening to her on a loop and wondering what she’s got that is so special. Apart from her astonishing vocal and songwriting talent, I think mostly it’s the joy, the timeless, unapologetic joy. I don’t need to go to Marlay Park to see her. I’ll sit and listen to Dean in my kitchen this weekend. And if she’s somehow passed you by then check her out. She’s worth much more than “a couple minutes” of your time.