Vance Joy Is Songwriting By Zoom

Hanuman Welch talks to ALT CTRL playlist cover star Vance Joy about his song ‘Missing Piece’. Joy tells Welch about creating during the lockdown, working with Benny Blanco, and what’s next.

Vance Joy Tells Apple Music About ‘Missing Piece’ Ushering In A New Era For Him…

At the time I was finishing this song and releasing it, I guess my main motivation was, “Gee, I haven’t released songs in a while, so maybe I should just release some music. Just see what’s happening and just to remind people that I’m still kicking.” Also, I didn’t realise that I had belief in the song, but after you listen to mixes over 50 times or whatever, you lose a bit of perspective. So I really didn’t have an expectation of how people would embrace it, but it’s been very positive, the response. And I guess based on that, it’s like, hey, well, people are like, what about the album? And so now I’m kind of turning my mind to that and I’ve got about five or six songs that I’m really proud of, but I think I still need a few more. So I’m just doing Zoom songwriting sessions, doing all the same stuff that I’ve been doing over the last year, just to put it all together. And yeah, it is, I guess, a new chapter. I feel like I’m getting better at songwriting, but also, when I started writing songs, I thought that all my songs were awesome. And now I’m a little bit more critical, so maybe that’s leading to a better result, I don’t know. I’ll let people decide.

Vance Joy Tells Apple Music About Missing The ‘Romance’ Of Visiting A City To Write Songs…
It has been very different. Doing a Zoom songwriting session, it’s mostly the same, except there’s something to be said for traveling. When I’d come and work in LA or in Malibu and some of these places, I would really enjoy getting the Airbnb, hiring a car, driving to the studio, driving to the person’s house I was working with. That all kind of informed the songwriting. I wrote a song with my kind of regular collaborator, Dave Bassett. He lives in Malibu and I’d drive on the highway there from Venice Beach, and I just loved that drive every day. So some of the context is taken away. You wake up in your bed, you go to the next room, login to Zoom. It’s a little less kind of romantic in that way and maybe a little less inspiring, but I have to say that writing “Missing Piece” has kind of changed my perspective a little bit on the quality of the music. Because the fact that people have been kind of stoked on it and I’ve gotten such a nice reception just from fans and people who have just listened to it, it makes me think, hey, maybe I don’t always need to feel romantic in myself. Maybe the song will speak for itself, I’ll just put it in the world. I might not have a clear idea, but the feedback will come.

Vance Joy Tells Apple Music About The Songs He’s Been Working On For A New Album…
There’s four or five songs that I’ve written over Zoom that I feel confident about. And there’s a couple of songs that I did write, there’s, I guess, a mixture of these kind of Zoom vibes and this kind of lockdown period of the last year and a half of four or five songs. But there were a couple of songs that, yeah, I guess I was able to write maybe late 2019. That was my typical writing trip where I’d be working with Dave in Malibu and I went over to London, I wrote a couple of songs there with a lovely guy named James Earp, whos written some great songs.So I did have a cool writing trip just before COVID. And I think if I look across the board, I’d say that they’re pretty even. So I think sometimes you can kind of get in your own way about the right way to create, the right way to… Am I feeling inspired, all those things. But I think it’s still in there, the creative well is still in there and it’s still flowing. It’s just about maybe just getting out of your way and just kind of listening to it and just kind of putting your head down and picking up a guitar most days and trying.

Vance Joy Tells Apple Music About Working With Benny Blanco….
This was a very unique experience for me. I’m sure for those guys too because I wrote a demo with a lovely girl named Caroline Pennell and then this guy, Blake Slatkin, whos a fantastic songwriter too. The three of us got together, we wrote this song called ‘You’, which went for about four minutes and it had a bunch of different parts. Anyway, Benny heard it because he’s friends with Blake, and he’s like, “I love basically this one minute of the song”. And we’re like, “Oh, amazing.” And then I hear through my A&R guy, Stefan, that Benny is going to be working on the song. And I’m like, wow, amazing because I’m such a fan of Benny. And then another six months later, I hear that Marshmello and Benny are working on the song. I’m kind of standing back, I’ve done one day of writing and then I’m hearing that the song is taking shape and I have no idea, I haven’t heard anything. And then a whole year after that day of songwriting, I hear this finished version and it’s got this incredible instrumental breakdown and this really kind of uplifting beat. And so for me, I don’t know if that’s a typical thing, I don’t know for those guys if they’ve worked that way before. But for me, it was just like you plant a seed and then one year later, you hear this kind of great song that has totally transformed and totally transformed for the better.

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