Vance Joy performs at Live 105’s Not So Silent Night at Oracle Arena on Dec. 8, 2017. Alessio Neri/STAFF.

SAN FRANCISCO — James Keogh could have been a lawyer; he’d completed the degree for it. Or he could have been a successful, yet underpaid, footballer in Australian rules football. But he’d lost the passion for sports. Instead, he wrote some songs and became Vance Joy, whose earnestly peculiar song that name-checks Michelle Pfeiffer – “Riptide” – is probably playing on your radio right now. Last year he signed a five-album deal with Atlantic Records – in sports analogy terms, his team believes he can take them all the way – and his debut album, Dream Your Life Away, will be released Sept. 9.

We chatted with the Melbourne-based singer and songwriter at Outside Lands last week, and found out more of Keogh’s backstory. You can catch Vance Joy Nov. 29 at Slim’s.

Your best experience at Outside Lands?

James Keogh: When I got here, we were pretty hungry because we had a long flight. We got here, went out and got some split pea soup. It was so good. It was the best soup I ever had; the best I can remember. It’s a bit chilly, and it’s warming my heart.

You have a law degree. How did you find yourself as a musician?

Keogh: I’ve always loved writing music. I was halfway through my law degree and I’d written a couple songs I was really proud of. The dream of being a musician was growing in my heart. By the time I finished my degree a couple years ago, I had written about four or five songs that … I wanted to show the world. I could have tried to go and get a job, but I thought, I’m going to spend a year doing this music and see where that road takes me. I went straight into it, and since then, I haven’t looked back.

Any chance of you going back into law?

Keogh: Not really. I really don’t think that I’d go with law. If I wasn’t doing music, I’d do teaching or something else, like be a librarian.

You were also an athlete. And you also played football. Does that mean soccer, or rugby?

Keogh: It means neither. It’s an Australian sport called Australian rules football. It’s full-contact. It’s physically intense as rugby, but you need to run around more. If you type it into YouTube, you can see how mad this game is.

How high up did you go? Are we talking college or pro?

Keogh: We don’t really have a college system. But it’s the league below the big proper league – semi-professional. You get a little bit of money but not much. … If you love it enough, you persist through the injuries. [Writer’s note: Keogh won the Victorian Football League’s equivalent of rookie of the year award in 2008.]

Why did you give that up?

Keogh: I just think my passion for it was diminishing, and I just needed to recalibrate. I needed to get something new into me. I took some time traveling, and when I left, I knew my passion was music.

“Riptide” is an interesting song – it feels very earnest, yet the lyrics are proclamatory and pop culture-referencing. Tell me about how that song came together and what it means to you.

Keogh: It’s a weird one. A lot of it was random things in my head and experiences I was having at that time. I know what you mean. It is a quirky song, and I think that can happen when you have a string of consciousness, and you’re kind of just letting things out. There’s desire, a melancholy, and an earnestness to it, but it is quirky, and I think the (video) shows that.

The lyrics mention you’re afraid of dentists. Did you have a bad experience?

Keogh: I had braces. It was when I was awkward and 14 and socially inept. That wasn’t the best mixture.

Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.