Song Details
- Album Release Date: 2012
- Genre: goth
Song Meaning of “Erica America” by Jens Lekman
Erica America is a song about finding home and comfort in unexpected, unfamiliar places. It speaks to the feeling of uprootedness and displacement many of us can relate to in this day and age, and how we can find solace in awe-inspiring and unfamiliar places.
The narrator of the song talks of his own journey, travelling from Sweden to the United States in search of a home and an identity. He longs to feel connected to somewhere, yet he arrives to a place that offers so much more than what he was expecting—an untapped, new world of possibilities. He marvels in the beauty and the vastness of his surroundings, describing how the vastness of the American landscape is like a mother’s embrace— a place that even with all its strange overwhelmingness also offers warmth and familiarity.
The narrator admires the resilience of the people he meets, and their ability to make a home out of anywhere. He speaks of the strength of his compatriots, moved halfway around the world in search of a new start. He looks around and feels a sense of deep connection to the people and the place, and discovers in this new environment qualities of his homeland and himself he had never seen before.
The final chorus of the song ties all these themes together, celebrating both the traditional and the new—finding warmth and familiarity in the unknown, which ultimately lead him towards a new identity and home.
Lyrically, Erica America is a triumphant ode to self-discovery, scattered with bits of nostalgia, and yet overflowing with optimism for the future.