Honestly, the song itself, I don't have a huge issue with. It's not a great song, but it's really not a "bad" song, either. It's just okay.
It's the love for it that has sent me into fits of rage. It's completely unoriginal, it follows the same formula made annoyingly famous by the likes of Jason Mraz, Train, Mumford & Sons, etc. More than 100,000 people voted it as the BEST song of 2013. It just isn't that fucking good. Even Royals would have been a far more deserving winner. And now, on the back of that ONE song, he has a five-album deal with Atlantic and the two or three songs from his new album sound almost exactly the same as Riptide.
I hate it because one day, for example, Los Campesinos! will have to break up due to it not being sustainable, and they will be forgotten by all but a small handful, and someone like Vance Joy will continue strumming a ukelele, singing vapidly about girls, and he will make millions and millions of dollars.
I know this is how popular music works but I'm not going to stop whinging about it.