{"id":510127,"date":"2026-06-20T20:33:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510127\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T20:33:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:33:36","slug":"you-think-your-pop-music-days-are-over-but-then-an-artist-like-olivia-dean-comes-along-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510127\/","title":{"rendered":"You think your pop music days are over, but then an artist like Olivia Dean comes along \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, the delirious screams that ripped through my house a few months ago when the Olivia Dean<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go alone, I decided. Sway along unselfconsciously in a sea of people more than half my age. I\u2019d wallow in songs such as Nice to each Other, Man I Need, A Couple Minutes and (my favourite) I\u2019ve Seen It. I\u2019d wear my big rain jacket to brave the elements in Dublin\u2019s Marlay Park<\/a> this weekend. I would not cramp the teenager\u2019s style. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s just not the order of things.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Olivia Dean at Marlay Park: Stage times, set list, ticket information, how to get there and moreOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s 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\u2019s 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: \u201cWho is that? Who is she?\u201d <\/p>\n

It happened to me with A Couple Minutes. My daughter was singing it, that line about two former lovers meeting \u201cturn around, since when are you smoking now?\u201d. The line is crooned with affectionate, intimate knowing. Dean sings as though she\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

She sings songs that feel almost instantly familiar. She sings, mostly, about love. I\u2019ve Seen It is one of those songs as is Man I Need. They feel as though they\u2019ve always been with us. I\u2019ve Seen It sounds like something Paul McCartney<\/a> 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\u2019s a deceptively powerful composition about love in all its unknowable forms. \u201cThe more you look, the more you find \/ It\u2019s all around you, all the time \/ Catches your eye, you blink and then it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. It\u2019s Dean\u2019s bible. \u201cThe only piece of writing that I\u2019ve read that talks about love as a skill and something that is political, spiritual and healing,\u201d she has said. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Olivia Dean: \u2018Why do I have to be in distress to make good music? Why can\u2019t I just be happy?\u2019<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Her enthusiasm sends you off searching for quotes from that book: \u201cAll 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\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Women\u2019s 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\u2019s face. \u201cThis song is for my granny \u2026 for any immigrant, anyone\u2019s who\u2019s brave enough to move,\u201d she said, introducing her song Carmen.<\/p>\n

\"OliviaOlivia Dean performs on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury last June. Photograph: Joe Maher\/Getty <\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

Dean says the kind of stuff you want your teenage daughters and sons to hear: \u201cIt took time and working on myself to realise that I\u2019m 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 \u2026 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s narcissistic to say. I\u2019m a good person and I really do feel like somebody will be lucky to fall in love with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been listening to her on a loop and wondering what she\u2019s got that is so special. Apart from her astonishing vocal and songwriting talent, I think mostly it\u2019s the joy, the timeless, unapologetic joy. I don\u2019t need to go to Marlay Park to see her. I\u2019ll sit and listen to Dean in my kitchen this weekend. And if she\u2019s somehow passed you by then check her out. She\u2019s worth much more than \u201ca couple minutes\u201d of your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oh, the delirious screams that ripped through my house a few months ago when the Olivia Dean tickets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[615,93,61,60,709,213688,33350,5876,45578],"class_list":["post-510127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dublin","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-marlay-park","tag-olivia-dean","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-roisin-ingle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}