Songfacts®:

• Vance Joy wrote this song just prior to a three-month vacation while studying for a law degree. It proved to be a breakthrough for the fledgling singer-songwriter. "'Winds of Change' is the first song I ever wrote that I thought was any good," the Melbourne native said. "It was 2009. It was a breakthrough. It planted the seed in my head of me being able to write good songs."
  
  "So I went away and I had all these ideas running through my head, I didn't take an instrument, I just made notes in a book," he continued. "When I came back I wrote 'From Afar.' 'Winds of Change' was the first coherent song I wrote that I wanted to show people. I'm glad that song opens that album. It was the change in my song writing, I discovered that strumming rhythm. It started something."