While he played “Riptide” with Dua Lipa live in Australia on Sunday, Vance Joy previously shared the stage with another huge pop star when he opened for Taylor Swift‘s 1989 World Tour in 2015.
Vance got the gig after Swift covered “Riptide” on the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, a moment he now feels was one of the most momentous of his career.
“At that moment I was like, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m outside my life,'” Vance, born James Keogh, tells ABC Audio. “It’s crazy. It’s just a surreal thing.”
“It was amazing, but it felt harder to connect with than, like, your first Instagram post or your first Facebook thing with 1,000 listens,” Keogh adds. “It was just like, ‘What the hell, am I watching a movie now?'”
To then get invited on the tour, Keogh says, was “awesome.”
“I remember just being, like, really wanting to do it immediately,” he says. “But also … it was kind of blended in that feeling of surreal, like, ‘I’m in a movie now’ kind of thing.”
The whole experience also brought to life an inside joke he and his friends have about the “barometer” of his career.
“My friends were like, ‘Do you know that Chris Martin knows your music?'” Keogh explains. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know, I guess, maybe. He probably would’ve heard “Riptide.”‘”
“That became very real, that test, because Taylor Swift definitely knows my song, ’cause she played it,” he continues. “She definitely knows who were are, because she invited us on a tour. So that was very much confirmed in that moment.”
Vance Joy will launch a North American tour in August. The trek includes a date opening for The Lumineers.
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