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Female Lead Music Tennessee

What Does Home Mean?

Oslo by De Joie

De Joie is singer/songwriter Kaley Rutledge. Her 7,780 monthly Spotify listeners makes her (by far) the most popular artist we have spotlighted so far. In De Joie’s first album she grapples with the idea of home. Kaley lives in Nashville, but she really found a sense home in her travels to Western Europe. These places impacted her so much that when she got back to the States she made an album of four songs, a song for each city she visited.

Oslo is the first song on De Joie’s album August and is my personal favorite. She mixes vox, strings, and synths to give this song a healing presence. In Olso, De Joie really captures the joy of thriving where you belong. Listening to this song put a smile on my face and I hope it will do the same for you. Lyrics and Analysis below.

Lyrics to Oslo by De Joie (courtesy of jiosaavn)

Can you hear me say “I love you” from across the sea?
Can you hear me whisper to you my dreams?
Well, the weather is fine here in Oslo
We’re about to jump on a plane to the west coast

There’s a view we can’t miss
I wouldn’t dream of it
There’s a view we can’t miss
I wouldn’t dream of it

I was born to be wild and free
Traipsing the coast line of some craggy beach
Go on and tell ’em I’m in good company
Wild and free


Can you hear me say, “I love you” from theses far way places?
All these wide open spaces seem to heal me

There’s a view we can’t miss
I wouldn’t dream of it

There’s a view we can’t miss
I wouldn’t dream of it

I was born to be wild and free
Traipsing the coast line of some craggy beach

Go on and tell ’em I’m in good company
Wild and free

DIVING DEEP

The concept of home has been something that I have thought a lot about over the last decade. It’s not just a physical space; instead it’s a near mythical land with powers to heal. Home is a place of recovery, our very own ICU that each of retreat to every day. This is an insane concept, but equally peculiar is that each of us rehab at our own unique center. How crazy is that!? Every one of us returns to our own distinct location for the same thing. Healing.

Kaley of De Joie does a fantastic job of exploring the concept of home. In the song Oslo we see two different homes. The first home is filled with the people she loves, but it is lacking. She has left it in search for something – Can you hear me say “I love you” from across the sea? Can you hear me whisper to you my dreams? We’re about to jump on a plane to the west coast. The second home is Oslo, which is also filled with people she loves, AND is a place where she finds healing – Well, the weather is fine here in Oslo. Go on and tell ’em I’m in good company. All these wide open spaces seem to heal me.

I really love how Kaley responds to the healing she receives when she finds home: She realizes she was born to be wild and free. This idea seems counterintuitive to me because before finding this new home Kaley was a wanderer, searching for home.. One could say that she was free to roam and be wild, but she did not feel that way.

However, when Kaley finds home, even though she is now tethered to a place (Oslo), she proclaims herself wild and free. How can we make sense of this?

It’s as if belonging to something or someone brings freedom while total independence produces turmoil. This is a thought worth sitting in, and for that I thank De Joie!

What do you think about home? What does home mean to you?

Sources
https://dejoiemusic.com/bio
https://www.jiosaavn.com/lyrics/oslo-lyrics/RwxYdhUIQ1A
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5oJYqPFbjnOksOFe7uOx9G?si=lU9yJgeQTVutw5Y2q_AR7A