Vance Joy (2017)

One Liner: Pleasantly poppy indie music, with that one huge "Riptide" song that mentions Michelle Pfeiffer.
Wikipedia Genre: Indie pop, indie folk
Spotify Says Similar To: George Ezra and Tom Odell
Home: Melbourne, Australia

Poster Position: 4
Slot: Sunday, 7:15pm

Thoughts: I kept holding off on doing his review, expecting that he would release new music sooner or later, but nope.  He's still just got the one album, 2014's Dream Your Life Away, although that one album has three instantly recognizable hit songs and one more that I don't recognize but still has 141 million streams.  Joy was last here for ACL in 2015, so there honestly isn't a bunch to say about him that I didn't say in my 2015 post on him.  When I wrote that post, he had just under 250 million streams for his big hit, "Riptide," but that has shot up to 501 million in the two years since then.  Pretty large.

Another 184 million views of that YouTube video.  Joy makes perfectly nice acoustic pop songs, in the vein on Phillip Phillips or David Grey or Mumford.  Since I've pretty well reviewed all of his music already, here are some factoids about him that I found on the Interwebs:

• Real name is James Gabriel Keogh
• Before music, he was a professional Aussie rule football player.  I've never understood that sport, but I feel like this means he is tough.
• The title for the song "Riptide" came from the hotel where he stayed as a kid on vacation.
• His stage name came from a Peter Carey book called Bliss.  The novel is apparently about an advertising executive who comes back from death and realizes that he is living in hell and so he takes up with a hooker and they move to the forest. MMMkay.
• He apparently sings about Michelle Pfeiffer because he was inspired by how she, as Catwoman, trashed her pink and frilly apartment and went nuts.  Again, MMMkay.
• He took Japanese in high school.

So there you have it!  Here is another one of his hit songs - "Fire and the Flood," which has 51.6 million streams.

I'd have considered going to see him, but he's up against Portugal. The Man, so I doubt I'd choose him over them.