Vance Joy shares a ‘real’ love story on In Our Own Sweet Time album

Forget rom-coms and Shakespeare. Vance Joy wanted to share what real love looks and feels like with girlfriend Selen on his new record.

When Vance Joy connected with art director Selen on a dating app three years ago, it wasn’t long before he was imagining how she would inspire the songs for his third record In Our Own Sweet Time.

The pair met in Barcelona in June 2019, just weeks before he joined American pop superstar Pink for the final leg of her Beautiful Trauma world tour in Europe.

One of the songs to be revealed with the album release this week, titled This One, preserves that first date in a sonic snapshot, from her “short brown hair and red rain jacket” to him thinking “I hope I can hold on to this one”.

“My girlfriend can definitely recognise some of the details in the songs and especially in This One, which details when we met and what she was wearing and some of the stuff that happened … so she loves that song,” the Melbourne-raised singer-songwriter born James Keogh says, proudly.

“She honestly didn’t know who I was; she kind of connected the dots a bit later, but I think I was lucky to find someone that really had no awareness of me or my music.

“So she just thinks of me as James.”

Sunny winter days with my Askim (my love) pic.twitter.com/tbAV0OYIFZ

— Vance Joy (@vancejoy) January 31, 2022

The album’s lead single Missing Piece was a love song of its time, written about trying to remain connected with his girlfriend across the Covid divide while he remained in locked down Melbourne.

He was able to travel to Barcelona to be with her for an extended period in 2020 and relocated to the Spanish city about a year ago.

The song struck a chord with millions of fans with their own experience of being separated from loved ones, generating more than 200 million streams.

Much of the album centres around the theme of “creating a life and a world with someone”, its songs mostly written over Zoom during the long pandemic pause on touring, with collaborators including Grammy-winning producer Joel Little and writer Dave Bassett.

In Our Own Sweet Time unpacks the reality of love instead of the myth. Picture: Supplied

The music is unmistakably the sound of Vance Joy, the elemental acoustic instruments from guitars to horns upfront, underpinned by contemporary beats.

But its narrative seeks to paint a very different picture of his experience of love, compared to “the romantic story of movies and even from Shakespeare.”

Songs like Catalonia, Way That I’m Going, Wavelength, reflect the contentedness of someone who found the missing piece of their life’s puzzle.

“I feel like, just in my own life, I kind of threw out a bit of that noise of (love) should be like this,” he says.

“I felt this contented, relaxed (feeling) that didn’t conform to the stereotypes. So I was writing about knowing you’re on the right path and I think that feeling of contentedness came through in a bunch of the songs.”

Recent bright times ☀️ pic.twitter.com/GZQ3oGQrMW

— Vance Joy (@vancejoy) March 15, 2022

Selen was naturally the first to hear many of the songs written by her boyfriend as they were works-in-progress.

He wasn’t particularly shy about sharing them with her but she wasn’t one to assume they were about her unless it was glaringly obvious.

“She’s so on my side that I’ll play her a song that I’m a bit unsure about and she’ll go ‘No, I love it, it’s good’ and it’s actually nice to have her support in that way,” he says.

“But I also know there are varying levels of response; she has more of an emotional radar so if the song has the power to bring tears to the eyes, they’re the good ones I think.”

But there is another litmus test his songs have to pass for the 34-year-old songwriter to feel truly validated.

When he dropped Every Side Of You last week, his drummer and co-producer Edwin White sent a message sharing how great it sounded on streaming and the video but it wasn’t until he got a text message from his parents that Joy was well, overjoyed.

“It wasn’t until my parents sent me a message last night saying ‘Love the song, the film clip is brilliant’ that I was like ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s good’ and I went back and listened to from a different perspective,” he says.

“I guess they are in a way (the litmus test). It’s not like I base all my decisions on how they feel about a song but when they respond good to one, it’s usually a good test, probably because we are aligned in the way we receive things.

“It’s like if my dad says he doesn’t like an actor, every time I see that actor in a movie, I’ll be like, ‘Oh, they suck’. And then I’ll be like, ‘No, they might not suck. My parents might be biased’!”

Joy in his adopted hometown of Barcelona. Picture: Supplied

Joy will take his new songs out for a long ride on the Long Way Home tour of Australia from September, a mammoth undertaking of big gigs throughout every pocket of Australia he could find a venue.

Like Amy Shark, Guy Sebastian and a raft of Australian artists, Joy believes it is imperative to head out of the cities to play regional and rural gigs in the post-pandemic touring landscape.

Getting back on the road in the US has been both a welcome return to the day job and a surreal experience after being unable to play for two years.

“I’m so looking forward to coming back to play in Australia but I’m really excited about the immediate future where I get to come home this week to launch the album.”

In Our Own Sweet Time is out now. The Long Way Home tour kicks off in September with all dates via frontiertouring.com

Originally published as Vance Joy shares a ‘real’ love story on In Our Own Sweet Time album