Joy Oladokun and Adekunle Gold Find Spiritual Release on “Sage”

LOS ANGELES, CA- I’ve found myself searching for spiritually positive music lately, not necessarily music that preaches or promises easy answers, but music that somehow leaves a little more light in the room than it found. There was something about Joy Oladokun’s “Sage,” a duet with Nigerian singer-songwriter Adekunle Gold, that hit a subtle nerve with me in exactly that way.

The song begins subdued, almost weary. Oladokun and Gold sing from a place where the days have started piling on top of one another, where simply staying strong has become an act of resistance. But rather than allowing those thoughts to settle in, the song answers them. The bad thoughts are told to find somewhere else to live, while the smoke from burning sage becomes both an image of cleansing and a declaration that whatever darkness has been hanging around has overstayed its welcome.

It is at that moment that the arrangement begins to reinforce the sentiment. When the chorus first arrives, a more pronounced percussive element enters with it, suddenly giving those words momentum. What had sounded like an internal struggle begins to feel like an act of spiritual defiance. The sentiment is simple: No, not here. Find another place.

Oladokun has explained that she and Gold wrote “Sage” at the height of the pandemic, when so much of life was defined by uncertainty and circumstances beyond anyone’s control. She describes the song as being about the need to shake off some of that weight, while also recognizing the grief that comes with accepting that the world is not necessarily as we think it should be.

Several years removed from that particular moment, however, “Sage” hardly feels like a pandemic song. If anything, its message feels frustratingly timeless. There will always be another worry, another disappointment, another reason to wonder when the world is finally going to change. The circumstances evolve, but the struggle to keep those things from taking up permanent residence inside us does not.

That distinction matters because “Sage” never suggests that the troubles themselves have disappeared. The song returns to the repetition and exhaustion of everyday life, to prayer, the paper chase and the seemingly endless accumulation of another thing gone wrong. The bad thoughts inevitably return too. So Oladokun and Gold send them away again.

By the shortened third verse, that repetition has begun to feel intentional… almost ritualistic. Then, as “Sage” moves through its final chorus, the percussive elements gradually recede and the song settles back toward where it began. Nothing has magically been fixed. Instead, the structure feels cyclical, almost like the musical equivalent of cleansing a space knowing that, eventually, you may have to cleanse it again.

That may be what I find so spiritually positive about “Sage.” Its optimism isn’t naive. It acknowledges how difficult it can be simply to keep your head above the accumulated weight of everyday life, then offers something small but powerful in response: the ability to decide what you will and will not allow to remain within you. The darkness may come back tomorrow. When it does, you can tell it again: find another place.

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