The Australian singer-songwriter, whose real name is James Keogh, described the inspiration for his stage name:

I got my name from a book called Bliss by Peter Carey, which is an Australian story. I had about five or six songs I was really stoked with, and I just wanted to have a name to put with that new collection of songs that wasn’t my name, because people always mispronounce Keough because it’s got the ‘gh’ at the end. So I used Vance Joy, which is a character [in the book] — he’s like a storyteller, so it’s a cool name.