Riptide

There are songs that don’t need an explanation to stick in your head, and Riptide is one of them. The hook doesn’t come with an explosive chorus, but with a rhythm that feels like it was plucked from a beach sunset: the acoustic guitar weaves chords that bounce between playful and melancholic, while Vance Joy’s voice drifts along with a cadence that wavers between a whisper and a restrained shout. The lyrics, packed with everyday images turned into metaphors—like when he compares the fear of love to “the tide that drags”—work because they sound like an improvised confession in an empty bar. It’s no coincidence that many remember it as an anthem for those moments when music feels like a lifeline.

The song was born in 2008, but it took years to take its final shape. Joy wrote it in his home in Glen Iris, Melbourne, during a time when he hadn’t yet decided to pursue music professionally. He kept it in a drawer until years later, while playing in local bars, he dug up that initial draft and blended it with new ideas. The final recording happened in 2012, in just one afternoon at Red Door Studio in Brunswick, with Edwin White on drums and John Castle polishing the final details. What’s curious is that the title comes from a motel his family frequented when he was a child, an unassuming place that nonetheless ended up naming a hit that spent over 100 weeks in the Australian top 100. By 2015, it had already broken records: it became the song with the most consecutive weeks in the ARIA Singles Chart, surpassing hits like Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. In the United States, it reached number 1 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, and in the United Kingdom, it cracked the top ten. Sales exceeded six million worldwide, but what’s most striking is that, even after all this time, it still sounds fresh—as if every chord carries the echo of those first nights in Melbourne where it all began.