Riptide - Vance Joy analysis

Analysis of Riptide

'Riptide' by Vance Joy is a track on Joy's debut album 'God loves you when you're dancing' along with an official video. Riptide is a montage whose visuals have a direct link with the lyrics for example when the lyrics "Lady, running down to the riptide" a visual of a woman running towards the riptide is shown as well as "Taken away to the dark side" where we see a person literally dragged across to the shadows. This is the case for most of the video. 

Jean Baulliard's postmodern theory is applicable as when it come to the lyrics  "got a lump in my throat 'cause

You're gonna sing the words wrong" the subtitles show the word "wolf" rather than "wrong" as well as the lip sync being completely off making the video self aware of itself breaking the boundary of the real world and the narrative. Note that Vance joy is not once shown in the video which is odd as it is his debut album and would help his star image however he chooses not to holding a great emphasis on the narrative.

The narrative is disjointed and not visually portrayed in the video leaving viewers to make their own theories and assumptions judging from the lyrics. The lyrics open with "I was scared of dentists and the dark" These are two common phobias caught when one is a child possibly suggesting this story starts when our narrator is a child. It follows up with "I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations" the fear of talking to girls is most common when you are a teenager, our main character is growing up this possibly suggests the story to be about their life. The lyrics "Oh, all my friends are turning green" is accompanied by an image of a dollar bill. Green represents envy and money is something most want, it could be his friends are beginning to become jealous of something he has. The line that follows is " You're the magician's assistant in their dreams" the "magician's assistant" is a typically beautiful woman who is used as a distraction. My personal theory is that this is a story about a boy who starts off his younger years scared of "dentists" and "the dark" but when hit puberty he is "scared of pretty girls and starting conversations" as he begins to become more attractive his friends begin to become "green" with envy over his qualities and become jealous of his new found love who his friends dream of her being their "magicians assistant" . The lyrics "Lady, "running down to the riptide

Taken away to the dark side" possibly suggest "running" towards this relationship is like "running down to the riptide" as his new found love is taken to "the dark side".  The line "I wanna be you left hand man" refers to marriage where one would put on a wedding ring on their left hand, this suggests the boy is so smitten he wants to marry this girl. However this relationship is not all sunshine and rainbows