Switched on Pop - Jacob Collier unites the world

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

One of the most inventive and gifted musicians working today is none other than Jacob Collier. Maybe you know him from his YouTube videos, or co-writing SZA’s “Good Days,” or even performing alongside Joni Mitchell at this year’s Grammys. Jacob is a musician with thunderous chops, proficient on multiple instruments and with a voice that ranges from bass to soprano. over the past few years, he’s managed to release several records, net collaborations with everyone from Michael McDonald to T-Pain, and become the first British artist to receive a Grammy Award for each of his first four albums. His latest album Djesse 4 is the conclusion to his Djesse quadrilogy, and it features a kaleidoscopic range of style, from Indian sitar to Colombian reggaeton to a haunting Simon and Garfunkel cover. This week, we’re going to take a look inside the work and process of a musical mad scientist – our resident songwriter Charlie Harding sat down with Jacob to learn about his new record, his collaborators, and the beautifully unique way he sees and thinks about music. Sign up for the Switched On Pop Newsletter SONGS DISCUSSED Jacob Collier - In My Room, 100,000 Voices, A Rock Somewhere, Little Blue, She Put Sunshine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm a musicologist Nate Sloan. One of the most inventive and gifted musicians working today is Jacob Collier. Maybe you know him from his YouTube videos, or for co-writing Siza's Good Days, or from performing alongside Joni Mitchell at this year's Grammy ceremony. Either way, Jacob is a musician with thunderous chops, proficient on multiple instruments and with a voice that ranges from bass to soprano and everything in between. Over the past few years, he's managed to release several records,

net collaborations with everyone from Michael McDonald to T. Payne and become the first British artist to receive a Grammy Award for each of his first four albums. His latest, Jesse Four, is the conclusion to his Jesse quadrilogy. And it features a kaleidoscopic range of styles from Indian sitar to Colombian reggaeton to a haunting Simon and Garfunkel cover. So this week, we're going to take a look inside the work and process of a musical mad scientist. Our resident songwriter Charlie Harding sat down with Jacob to learn about his new record, his collaborators, and the beautifully unique way he sees and hears music. Jacob, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. You are releasing the fourth album in this massive arc of a quadrology, Jesse. You started your musical journey on YouTube. I had your first album in my room. And then you embark on a quadrology immediately. Why such an enormous project? Well, I made in my room in solitude, right, completely by myself. And that as an adventure was incredibly educational, very joyous. And I had to dig very deep into my soul to dredge up this album.

And I toured the album solo for two years with a one-man show. And I learned so many things. But by the end of that time period, I just realized to do the next phase of learning that I was craving, I had to do some collaboration. But I thought, well, how can I collaborate with all these people that I love at once? You know, I feel like, you know, the best way to learn music is to learn it from those who you love, you know, those who make the music that you love. And so I thought, what have I made a massive album?

One massive album, it began as one album. And I made this dream list, you know, like all these crazy names of people I'd love to meet, love to work with, love to throw paint with. And I soon realized, you know, this is not one record. this is more than one. And so it became two. So I was like, this is a double album, a big old double album.

And then I realized that it was like breaking at the seams. I thought, I think this must be three albums. So then for a while it was three albums. And three just felt inconclusive because it felt like each of them, you know, were in their own world. And I wanted to create a fourth album which kind of joined the whole thing together,

so fused the worlds together. So thus the quadrology idea was birthed. And I originally wanted to do all four albums in one year. back in 2018. Quite a Jacobian construct, that kind of ambition. Jacobian. Tell me, what is Jacobian? Oh, it's just something that Jacob would do.

Large-scale, maximalist. Yeah, big and big and brave and fairly ambitious and borderline, impossible. And it turns out that particular idea was impossible. And so it's become four albums in six years instead of one year. And I've learned so much. And it's actually crazy

and a little bit emotional that the journey is kind of coming to an end now. It's wild. I want to talk about some of those collaborators. There's amazing ones, but I do want to dive into some music to begin with. Where does our character find us at the beginning of Jesse four? Maybe who is our character? Yeah. And I want to meet them at the opening track 100,000 Voices.

This is so exciting. I've never spoken about this album before like this. Oh, wonderful. Thanks for asking these questions. 100,000 voices is where the journey begins. you're very, very far from home. You're kind of as far from home as you can imagine being. You've gone on this crazy journey that's taken you through multitudes, universes,

all sorts of crazy parts of the world, across Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3. So this is kind of where the character has dropped, and it's like in the midst of literally 100,000 voices, so 100,000 people, all with their own ideas, cultures, opinions, motivations, momentum, whatever. And so you're kind of on a street, and you're surrounded by all these people talking, chattering, rapping,

and you're hearing go past you all these different kinds of grooves, different kinds of beats. So you hear like a reggaeton beat over one speaker, you hear like a funky thing on the other. It's gospel. You hear hip-hop beats and stuff like that. And around these beats, you're hearing all these different voices. There's actually, there's about 10 or 12 languages,

different languages of rappers who are muttering things. And some of these rappers appear later on the album. Some of them don't, but there's Chinese rapping, there's Mosei rapping, there's Spanish, there's Japanese. And so all these different voices, they kind of appear and you're walking. You're walking forwards, you're walking somewhere. And you're drawn up the staircase, and you hear the character walk up these stairs and open a door. And then there's like a huge auditorium of audience members and an orchestra. Yeah.

And as you walk in, there's this hush. It's kind of like, everyone goes like, and there's a hush. And then the audience begins to sing. And this is, we can get into this later, but it's one of my current fascinations is the power of an audience singing together. It's really sort of haunted me and something I really obsess over. So the audience sings this A, you know, when an orchestra tunes up, the way it tends to work in classical music is, you know, the oboists will play in, you know, the orchestral will play. You know, the orchestral violin's join in there, and was open stringing and everything's tuning up. And it's just a really powerful sound, especially as someone who, you know, who grew up going to listen to orchestras play.

And my mother used to conduct orchestras when I was young. She still does. So that sound of like, okay, something's about to happen. The show's about to begin, you know. Just that feeling I love. But it's the people that tune the orchestra, right? So the people go, ma, and the orchestra goes, you hear French horns, you know, clarinets and violins and all this kind of stuff. Go.

And the sound grows and grows and grows. One of my biggest inspirations in music is the THX theme. I caught that. It's such a great sound. Yeah. And so I've all. always wanted to hear an orchestra do that, and I've also always wanted to hear a choir do that. And so I actually recorded both those things in the real world. I recorded an audience in Sydney

singing that THX sound, which I can explain later on. Tell me about it. Well, okay, so one of the main theses for this album, in a sense, is the idea of the audience choir. The idea that everyone in the world has a voice, if only you offer them the permission to use it, right? And I've been traversing so many corners of the world, getting audiences to sing and exploring the power. And, of strangers, you know, 2,000 strangers, 5,000 strangers singing together. We'll have many gifts, but one of your magical powers is that you can get people to sing in multi-part harmony. You also have very talented listeners and fans, but everybody starts to sing in multi-part harmony, and you move it all around. It's such a joy. It's one of the most

beautiful things that we can collectively do together. Oh, thanks so much for saying that. It really is something I feel immensely grateful to get to explore in real time with people, because I don't have a master plan really other than I know it's possible for people to tap into this inherent musical framework that everyone has because everyone listens to music all the time. So everyone has a sense of where harmony is and where music is in their mind. So my job on stage is to just provide very clear gestures up and down where notes are going to be rising and falling and to kind of guide the room in normally in three to six parts through a series of chords. and it's a beautiful, transformative, very, very special feeling. And so you did one of these in Sydney, which is a live version of the THX song. I did one of these in Sydney yet.

So I did 91 shows in 2022 with my band, and I recorded every audience choir. And so this song literally has 100,000 voices on it. Oh, my Lord. It's actually 100,000 real humans. I know that Apple expanded the number of tracks available in its software logic so that you could go up to, I think, a thousand or more voices, which you had been pushing the limits of. Right. So you have pushed the limits of the number of human voices all singing together in this moment.

Yeah, well, it was an amazing sound. It was quite an ambitious thing to do. In fact, this song has over 1,000 tracks in it. So I actually broke the track limit, which I was quite proud of. But these audiences altogether singing, it's like this massive wall of humanity. It's a glorious sound. It was December 4th, 2nd, 22, and we were in Sydney. And I tried something that I'd never done before. And I said to the audience, you know, okay, sing a D major chord. You know, like, so thanks, thanks very much. And then I said, okay, now everyone's sing the furthest note away from the note that you just sang. Absolutely chaos, like the worst chord in the world. And then I stood on one side of the stage and I actually said, okay, by the time I get from

this side to this side, you have to glide your note from that note that you just sang, the chaotic note, to the first note that you sang, which is, your note in D major. And let's just see what happens. Let's just see how it goes. I can actually play you a video right now. Oh, I'd love to see. On my phone.

They give you chills, gave me chills. It's crazy. So that's literally the sound you hear at that moment on the track. And I then wrote out these orchestral parts that had like strange, slidey lines between notes and stuff. And I had the Metropal Orchestra, which was conducted by my mom, Susie Collier. She and I kind of devised a plan as to how to get every one of these.

orchestra to glide their notes to a note in D major. And so, yeah, you hear this hybrid between the Metro Orchestra and the Sydney Audience Choir. But yeah, going back to the... Yeah, the journey where are we know? Okay. It's like you've been in the most chaotic, unknown environment. ...took a walk somewhere... ...surrounded by people that you do not know, languages that you don't know, cultures that you do not know,

and you're kind of just like out on a limb, and you find your way to this kind of symbolic room where the people people of the world or the idea of humankind catches you and lifts you and the character lifts up into the air and you're suspended. It's almost like the main character converges and collides with all the other characters who you've met and it's like we are one character. From here on out in the album we will walk together in this unified spirit of D majorness, you know. And yeah, this song kind of takes you on this, it takes you on this journey and almost describes

the spirit of this, which is you're walking out somewhere. And you're kind of searching for something. You're searching for answers. You're searching for maybe it's a person. Perhaps it's a feeling. Perhaps it's yourself. And as you walk and as you meet these people and as you hear these voices and as you hear these sounds,

you kind of learn who you are, which literally feels like what I've just been doing for the last five years with all these albums. It's like I walked out of my room, the room I made this first album in by myself into the wildest, craziest, collaborations of my life into the, you know, the strangest, most bizarre most inspiring corners of the world, every continent of the world is represented on this album. And it's through all these other people's

voices, audience choir, 30 collaborators, orchestras, choirs, everything, that I've kind of found my own voice in a sense. So, so, you know, you say, well, who's this character? It's not technically me, but there's definitely a lot of me in it. And I've just been so inspired by that feeling of going out and searching for myself, by which I kind of mean everyone, because I think that everyone on the planet is experiencing a lot of the same forces just in parallel situations. And one of the most beautiful things about the audience choir

is you get everyone to sing, you ask everyone to sing, and you're immediately reminded just how unified we can be in a very simple way. You just all sing, you know. And so it was around that feeling, I think, that I designed this song and also designed this, this album. We've already gone on this amazing adventure.

We're not even at the end of the first song. Yeah. Because things take a really sort of dire twist. Yes, they do. Almost into the world of like gent metal at the end. And you're singing moving into this section, I think some of the lyrics before and into it are, I just want to be ordinary.

I just want to live my life. I don't want to waste my life. Can you tell me about that movement into this very heavy, intense space at the end of these 100,000 voices. I think we live in a world of extremes. At least I definitely feel like I do internally and externally. You know, and you feel one thing really strongly. It might be it's peace.

And then you feel another thing really strongly, which is panic, you know. Or you feel a sense of real knowing and then you feel a massive sense of unknowing. I felt it was worth exploring this properly at the end of this song. You know, you've created this massive beginning of this journey. You know, you've kind of expanded the horizon. and you're walking forwards, everything's really joyous and big and whatever, and it's almost like you're dreaming, and then you kind of wake up from the dream a little bit.

Here you've got, let me be angry, let me be patient, let me be happy. Let me be ordinary, ordinary, ordinary, and the drums are going, nah, bass, what a guitar, and then as you walk forwards, you kind of get smashed over the face with samba. It's like an ocean wave that comes and just, covers up everything that you were doing and you kind of get swished up into this powerful feeling and it's like the finger snaps and you're in like a like a little cafe oh yeah I was actually and there's this like Bulgarian folk music playing over the

over the speakers as a sample I sampled the incredible Bulgarian female choir of television and radio one of my favorite groups musicians in the whole world and I meet this kind of other character who actually returns later in the album it's actually Jesse Reyes is the is the the real human being who plays this character, but she's almost like someone who's working in this cafe, and she says, in Spanish, she says, you know, can I help you with something? And I say, oh, yeah, and then it comes this, yeah, you say the sort of gent, massive death metal smash thing, which is really, it's quite alarming when it hits. It's a shock because it's almost like you're just beginning to settle into the journey or everything. And Willow Smith, who's one of my

favorite musicians in the world, she screams this stuff. And we sat together and came up with this kind of like supercharged phrases. And I think, yeah, she sort of says time. She says time. Because I'm saying, do you guys have any time? Because it's like the panic takes hold. You know, I think as a person, I also just feel there literally is not enough time in a day. I feel like that it's probably the most shocking and surprising moment on the album in a sense, because it kind of just goes bang. But the lyrics are. true. It's like I do want more time and I do need more time and I do feel that desperation. So I'm just like, being a human is hard. It's crazy. And how am I going to make sense of the world? I just don't

know what to do. And so I really relished in the enormity of that moment and those sounds. It's a very kind of animalistic primal roar. For me, it's quite an unexplored thing musically thus far. And I think that humans need to express that sometimes. Even if it doesn't quite make sense, it's like just, it's, you know, it's a bit like, let me be angry. You know, as the lyric said about 50 seconds prior, it's like, let me let it out. You know, let me explain what this journey is. Let me be the whole of myself. In the introduction of an album, it's appropriate.

I would say so. It's a bit of an overture. It's kind of a want song at the same time. Exactly. It gives us a taste of what's to come. None of the other songs have the same degree of Bombat. They all have a lot of energy in this album. But few go as many places as this.

Right, right, right. I definitely wanted to kind of take the rocket for a test ride, you know, kind of thing. And there was a sort of good-humored vengeance, I think, I feel, to some of those people who in the early days were like, stop experimenting. Just tow the line, you know? And you just think, man, in in 2023, there are so many musicians who are courageously and you could say, basically, joyously colliding forces and planning ideas. I love it. And I've always loved it. And I think it's the coolest and best time to create music that I've ever known.

But there's an amount of like, let's go. You know, like nothing is off limits. Let's just, let's explore every edge and every, every nook and cranny. I'm realizing that one of the expectations of you is a, you, you represent something very special in the world of music, many things. but one thing that comes to mind is that I've gotten to meet and chat with a number of your collaborators

Oh, cool Kimbra, Emily King, Lawrence, Lizzie McAlpine Yeah I've all been on the show Your name comes up Not infrequently Yeah

And I'll even just read you a message That I got today Clyde Lawrence Of the band Lawrence said I'm always amazed by how sort of open-minded And humble of a collaborator he is

Despite being so brilliant And I hear this thing over and over where you collaborate with people of very different kinds of languages of music. I'm teaching at NYU a music class right now. And I always try to emphasize people. You can't be a good or a bad musician. It's like that's like you're good at all languages or not. There's so many different languages. Oh, absolutely.

And one of the expectations of you is that you are now becoming a place where you attract people to collaborate with that are teaching you and you are teaching them this larger. set of languages that can maybe only occur on an album like Jesse 4. Like Jesse 4 can only exist because of all these gifts that have been exchanged through you and your collaborators. Oh, I love the way you put that. It definitely feels like a trade. It's like, oh, I've got some gemstones. If you give me some of yours, I'll give you some of mine.

And I've just, yeah, it's like I've been collecting all these, all these magic, cool things from all over the world. And it does feel like an exchange because I think that ultimately as an artist, one of your most valuable assets, probably your most valuable asset is your perspective. And the more perspectives that you can be accustomed to and learn and understand, the better of a musician you are. And so it's been a really, a really big sort of a capacious endeavor for my brain to have to kind of stretch and learn how to speak in these different worlds. You know, collaborating with, say, someone like Hamid or Umu is exceptionally different from collaboration with someone like Tidalasai, you know, or Chris

Martin or Stormsy, you know, Kirk Franklin. Like these people have such specific worlds and the joy for me has just been able to be able to walk around in these people's rooms for a little while and get to ask them questions and find common ground. And one of the craziest and most beautiful things I think I'm learning is just, you know, one note will feel right to one person and wrong to another person. So there literally is no such thing as a right and a wrong note. You can make a decision that feels strong or decision that doesn't feel strong.

but ultimately it's just about the perspective, it's just about the context that you put a note in. So, I mean, like to give you a musical example, is this, oh yeah. So when I was growing up, you take the chord C major, one of the most classic chords all the time, and you take the note C sharp, right? And you think, oh, that note does not, that doesn't belong in that chord at all, right?

But actually, when you sit with it for a little while, if I put the C sharp up an octave there, and I put the C major down here and I add a couple of other notes in, you can totally make that note make sense. That's like a really bright sound, or a chord like this, which is like a kind of like a C minor chord. It doesn't matter that these two notes rubble in the next to each other, because all you need to do is just look at this note from a slightly different perspective,

and it makes sense. Or say for example, this C sharp in A major, right, is a... is a particular world. But then if you... Right, same note, different chord, different world, different context, different perspective. But the C-sharp is still a C-sharp.

But it makes two completely different kinds of sense. And navigating that in harmony, but also in storytelling and also in collaborations. It's just I get a massive kick out of that. Let's go into a specific example. I really love the song A Rock Somewhere. Oh, thanks. And here you're collaborating with Anushka Shankar

and Vajarashi Meta. Mato Gopal. Varajashiri. Van Agriple, I think is how you say it. Thank you. Vera Joshri is a... Extraordinary singer from Bangalore India. Got it.

Okay. So, and we have Anoushya Shankar who is, you know, sort of one of the most acclaimed Indian classical performers on the sitar. When I think of this collaboration that you've done with her, I think of her father, Rabid Shankar collaborating with Philip Glass. Yeah. Trying to forge two really different worlds of music, Indian. classical music and sort of minimalist contemporary art music, both Indian classical music and

Western harmony are deep, deep, deep spaces. Yeah. Right? They can converge, but often they also will diverge. Can you speak to how you go about building this kind of collaboration, working in two different sets of harmony in ways of thinking about music? Yeah. How does that come together in a song?

I mean, it's a deep one. Indian music is a deep, deep, deep universe and something that you can only ever be a student at, you know, unless you spend multiple, they say multiple lifetimes, you know, learning these instruments, learning these systems. But I think that there's some overlap in my fascinations between the two. I think one thing I love about Indian classical music in terms of harmonic language is that notes are fluid and tuning systems are fluid. So there aren't any locked structures like on this piano I'm looking at now. Right. There aren't lines between the notes. You can glide. And actually the art of the phrasing and the communication and the emotion comes from how

you bend between these notes. I mean, you're going back to the THX inspiration. That's literally my favorite thing ever. So, you know, when Nushka, she came over to my room in London probably about six weeks ago now, and the first hour of the session was just me, like, asking all these questions, like, okay, tell me how this works. Like, what are all the Raghas that you would use in a situation like this?

Like, what could be one where the major and the minor third are both there? Like, how do you think about this? How do you bend the notes? Why would you bend the notes? Like, how did it feel? And it's wild, you know, as someone who plays the guitar, you know, when you play the guitar and you want the notes to go up and down, you move your hand up and down the fretboard, right?

On the sitar, one fret, you can bend one fret over a fifth. Like, say from like that note to like that note, that's all it on one fret. This frets are enormous frets. And so the crazy thing, just watching Inushka play was her control, her kind of like vertical control. It's less about horizontal movement and more about... Right.

That kind of, and the way that she'll tug on a note or glide or just control, it's really magnificent. It's an amazing thing to watch. And so we spent quite a long time thinking about, you know, what kinds of shapes that the lyrics were talking about, what kind of arcs that we wanted to create. And I wanted at the beginning of this song to give Anushka just a moment to say something that she wanted to say, you know, to play something that felt right.

And there was this sort of C, Tampura drone that was going. And so she does this beautiful kind of art. these melodic arcs. The interesting thing for me about this song, not just harmonically is the other languages different, but also sonically, it's very far from, in a sense, from certain kinds of Indian music that I've heard, definitely from Indian classical music.

You've got this kind of electronic, you know, sort of I call them ploops. You know, ploips? Yeah, ploips, plo-I-PS. They're underrated. This is different than a plunk.

different than a plunk. No, plunks are totally different. Okay, I just want to make sure. Actually, I would say, I would say, Anushka provided the plunks, or the splinks, you could say. And I was more of a, more of a, you know. But I really enjoyed the infrastructure of that mixing with the indie classic music. And I was quite sensitive to Anushka's taste, because I wasn't sure how she

responded to the demo. And I wondered if there would be a part of it, kind of be like, I don't know if this works, you know, you can't put sitar on like an electronic, be whatever. But one of my favorite things about Anusko is, and it's just, she was wide open. She was like, I love this meeting of worlds. It's so not trying to be Indian classical music that I can bring something that's very deep in that world,

and that creates like a sort of contrast, like a sort of like an alchemy against the Western, some of these Western sounds, some of these Western chords. I think my favorite moment of that song is, there's a moment after the second verse, I'll be waiting on the world. Only winning on the world. So you're kind of, I guess you're loosely in like C minor.

And then she goes, and she does this crazy melody in C major, which is so far from A-flat. And it's like she opens this trapdoor and like this heavenly light kind of comes in. And actually I recorded some doll drummers, like D-H-O-L, which is kind of like street drumming from India. Like a lot of the kind of the Bollywood stuff,

like the all that kind of stuff. That all exists in with Dahl and Bangor, all that stuff. super popular. But that's very far removed also from Indian classical music, which is much more about tablo and all sorts of things. Sure. So having the combination of this kind of these big sounds with some of the electronic drums with Anushka playing,

even just within India, that's a convergence of foreign worlds. And then bringing in the Western influence too, it's a very exciting combination. And it was just so interesting to hear Anushka speak about Indian collaboration historically, obviously with her incredible father, but also

just in her own terms, you know, she's worked with, for example, the Metropal Orchestra from Holland, you know, orchestrated. She's very wide-ranging in her collaboration. I think that's probably one thing. I look for it in a collaborator, and I value is just openness. That's it. If someone's down to just try stuff out and go there, so go across the line, I always get delighted by that because that's how I was kind of brought up in music to think, too, you know. Maria, you have a podcast now, and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster?

Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me.

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I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border. at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I'd love to chat about a few of those collaborations. Yeah. I'm always stunned not just by who you work with, but by the pairings that you make. So you have this beautiful gospel song, Witness Me.

Witness me, yeah. Kirk Franklin, Stormsy, Sean Mendes. Jacob Collier. Yeah. I never expected this combination. What are you looking for, not just in your collaborators, but in that group that you're bringing together? All three of those men in this world represent such different things and come from such

different places, but they have so much in common. Yeah, tell me about what are your associations with each of them? Well, they're three extremely warm people, very, very warm people. They're very loving, fiercely loving people. And they love it in different ways. You know, Kirk has a sort of like a ferventness to how he loves the world and loves God and loves his singers and his audiences. It's like he's like a supercharged Titan.

And he's his own musical world as well. Like you couldn't just call him gospel music. Kirk Franklin's music is its own entity. I mean, the sound of those 15 singers or whatever has illustrated so many of the records that have taught me music and I've loved for so many years. Yeah, we went to Arlington, Texas. to record with that group of singers.

They actually ended up on four songs on the album. They just sounds so good. It's crazy. And the setup is so simple. They just have, for those of you who are interested in microphones, they just have three C414s, one for each section of the choir. So soprano's out of tennis, boom. No bells, no whistles, just unbelievable musicians.

This is a utility microphone. It's a nice microphone, but it's a standard. It's fairly ordinary. It's not fancy. What is extraordinary is those singers, and it's the way Kirk kind of plays them. He plays them like an instrument. I watched Kirk. I've seen him do this from videos online, but he kind of, like, he doesn't really sing, Kirk.

Like, he sort of shouts and speaks and preachers and things, but he doesn't actually sing. Watching his body language kind of bring out these colors in this group as was so profound. I remember there was one take we did for Witness Me where it's like, I'm with you. And they go, I'm with you, right? I'm with you. And they were singing these responses,

and I thought it sounded great. I was like, man, this sounds amazing. Kirk was shaking his head, like, man, no, no, it's not it. I haven't got it yet. I haven't got it yet. And he kind of scratched his head and thought from a minute. And then he goes, more John Mayer. And then the group of the group singing is like,

got it, got it. And I'm like, what do you mean more John Mayer? And then they do another take. And it's like, I can't explain it. but he heard a missing color in that group because he knows every part of what that group could do sonically. I don't know why he said John Mayer. Another one of your collaborators on the album.

Yeah, who's also on the record, funnily enough. But there were levels I just couldn't have perceived deeper that Kirk was singing. But he loves so easily and fiercely and so extroversedly. You know, Sean is a sweet, sweet human. And he loves more, I would almost say he loves quite internally. He's quite introverted person. and he has a beautiful, sensitive and vivid inner world in this space,

which we all do in a sense. But, you know, Sean, like, he's such a thoughtful guy. And I think when he thinks about lyrics, when he thinks about music, he tunes internally into something that's kind of like, that feels right to me, that feels right to me. And it's amazing, you know, someone like Sean, who's been through so much, as an artist and has had such extraordinary pressure applied to him. He's had to develop, like many artists who I have worked with in Cleveridge on this album,

someone like Chris Martin is another example of this, but these people develop really, really strong North Stars in the pressure and in these environments so that they always know what feels right to them, and that's what they let guide them. So with Sean, you know, no amount of, oh, this is a big opportunity or this is going to pay a ton of money or whatever, like that stuff doesn't, that's not going to touch. Sean anymore. You know, what touches Sean is, does this feel right to me? And this song, witnessed me began with me and Sean, we sat together just by ourselves in, actually in Chris Martin

studio in Malibu, California. And we listened to a ton of gospel music together. And we bonded over the feeling of the joy, the sheer joy of it. We actually watched a bunch of Coke Franklin videos. There's a video of him, it's really old video, he looks like so young, pretty younger than me. And it's this song called Joy, it's one of the songs called Joy. Joy. Joy. Joy The law's great joy Joy Joy

And so down in my soul sweet Beautiful Joy And then he goes You know You get to change his skate

Joy Joy It's beautiful Anyway We watched that video Amongst others And we were just kind of like Man

How does he do it? How does he get that feeling? It's like we were talking about the idea of much more we than me. That was like one of the the thesis of the day. It was like all these artists in the world. And I think I've been one of them at times. I think Sean's been one of them at times. You know, you're an island.

You live in your own world only by your own means. And you work for yourself. You work for your own world, which could be really important at different times in your learning process. But with Sean and with me at that particular time, this is 2021, I think we were both searching for ways to live for, something much bigger than ourselves, you know? And a lot of the culture of the industry,

a lot of the culture of just media in general right now is of people kind of perpetuating their own beliefs, and they bubble up and they look in like this. And I think that, yeah, Sean and I were just talking about how music can be one of the core and key languages and methods to get people to think bigger than themselves. And, you know, with Kirk, he does it effortlessly and all those musicians do it effortlessly

because it's about God for them, you know. And it's about the community, it's about each other. And the idea of it being bigger and greater than you, the artist, for me, for my career, it's just so necessary and so beautiful. And so we wrote this chorus about the idea of witnessing another person, really seeing another person, being seen by another person, and opening yourself up to the idea that people can cross-section in beautiful ways. And we wrote the chorus there.

The verse took longer to find. And, yeah, it was almost two years later that I took the song to Arlington, Texas. and through paint with Kirk. And it was what Kirk did to the song. I mean, it made me so emotional at the time because it was just, it was, first of it was what we were talking about when we first wrote the song. And also, it just hits you so hard.

When you're in the room, and you can smell these singers' breath. You know, it's like, whoa, this is happening right here, right now. And the spirit of the musicianship is everything is about lifting each other up. I'm here for you. You can tell me. I know you do the same.

Anyway, all these ideas were permeating the process. And I think the last piece of the pie was Storms. Yeah. Maybe for folks who don't know as well. Like, what world is he coming from? What is his sound? Yeah. What is he contributing.

Well, so Storms is kind of like the king of UK Grime. Like one of the most recognizable and most legendary parts of his energy is really kind of like high energy, upbeat, spitting on the mic, like badass, cutting edge, just like dissing people, being super hype. and alpha male, you know, it's so cool. And that's how I became a fan. You know, you just said, rip that.

Tu-s-B-Tub-Tab-Bat-Tab-Bah. You know, those kind of stuff. Put your money where your mouth is. I don't want to talk about them. How they're going to put money in my trousers? Look, I ain't trying to get caught like them. My big bro's putting money into houses. You made all that door just to go and buy clothes

when they put your last money in your outfit. That's not real. Little man, Lowell it. We stay true. But his record, the record that we worked on was actually, it was much more sensitive and quiet and softly spoken. And he really looked within. Have mercy on them, Lord.

I know you're with them in a storm Even though it's hard to see I have to print you on a shirt Because I knew you to a tea In a different situation I imagine who you'd be Have mercy on them It reminded me of Sean in some ways

Because you know Sean's written these absolute Anthemic pop bangers That are loved by, you know, billions of people So, you know, same with Stormsy And both of them are at a point in their career Where they are choosing to look within And to find new colours

And things that are sort of nestled in their, you know, unconscious and in the more gentle parts of their being. So when I sent this record to Stormsy, I had the feeling that he would, he'd understand the essence behind it because I'd seen him. I worked on an album with his, his latest album and we all kind of lived on this island for a couple weeks. I heard him saying, Grime ain't dead. I'm Harry Stiles the way I find land tread. We got mainstream. Mind your business for you mind my bread. If 10 million won enough, I make a lifetime pledge. All right, what? He did this thing when we were on this island and he was making this record, where he passed this orcs cable around everyone who was on the odd,

probably about 15 of us there. And he was, you know, he was like, well, play me a song that it means love to you. Like, what's love through this orcable to you? Every one of us who had to play a song. That's such a beautiful thing to ask a group. The results were so varied. I don't know. I just, I think Stormsy is, he's one of these unique purveyors of the musical multiverse

in the sense that he can speak so many different dialects. he can absolutely rule the pyramid stage at Glastonbury, which he headlined back in, I think it was 2019. He can also be super hush, you know, and find something super sensitive. So, yeah, when he came on, then there was Sean who sent his verse in, which he wrote, like, you know, two years after the fact, he wrote that verse by himself. And the verse that I did was one that we kind of crafted together. You got Kirk and the singers, you got Sean who got Stormsy.

It just felt absolutely right, but I did not see that coming. I didn't see that combination coming. But I do, I get a massive kick out of it. of combining unusual, just like unusual combinations full stop, you know, musically. And also, I think, with this album in a new way in terms of collaborators. You know, there's a song in this album with Chris Martin and Esper on it. Huge K-pop group. Huge K-pop group.

Like, mad, like, you know, the new generation, absolute superheroes. I don't think I'll ever get over you. You see what I think about every time I hear you. And Chris, you're such a magnificent and resplendent force of joy and such a dear friend to me. But what a cool combination. And I just, I love the kind of the, the sparks that are created when you smash those two bits of flint. You're like, bang, and you get this unusual recipe, you know.

Maybe we can close out the musical conversation with a quieter moment in your musical multiverse, as you call it, which I, is probably my only, only really truly, I love, it's the only time I've loved the use of that word. Yeah. Isn't the case of your... It's a bit of a dodgy word, isn't it? I really like your musical multiverse a whole lot. Yeah, oh, thanks.

You have a collaboration with Brandy Carlisle. Yeah. A little blue. And this song really struck me because we were talking about earlier some of the expectations that people might have of you. I first got to know your work through long explanations of negative harmony. Something I'm not totally sure of still. Yeah, me neither.

Through, you know, these very deep, complex, rich choral arrangements and covers of songs on YouTube. And you said, you know, people expect to be surprised. What I love about this song, Little Blue, is that it really feels, it does take us on a journey, but it feels a bit like a lullaby. Yeah. It's quite sweet. It's quite simple. It's melodically very, just a simple little arc. It's harmonically not too complex in its core.

Yeah. Yeah. And yet, there are these moments that you give us that I feel like tie a simple, beautiful lullaby with some very virtuosic moments of sort of surprising harmonic places that are fitting to the world. you're building. Could you tell me a little bit about the making of the song and how you make these choices of where do we want to stay where we might just have triad chords, something very basic? And when do we make the choice to go into these sudden surprises?

Yeah, it's a lovely, a lovely question. I think, well, the first thing to say, I suppose, is that I think there's an important difference between virtuosity and complexity. I think virtuosity is about quantity and I think complexity is about depth in a sense. I appreciate that. And so I feel like with Little Blue, in a sense, that song is even more complex than other more virtuosic things I've done in the past because of its dimensions. Yeah. And the friction that you can make, for example, between a lyric and a chord or a change

or a sound. But you get some examples? So, for example, in the chorus of that song, you know, you've got, he goes, Don't be afraid of the dark in your heart. You're going to find a way to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You're going to find a way. Right.

So really simple. Really lovely though. Sonically, you know, you've got, well, first of all, you've got 5,000 voices. You've got audience choirs underneath this, which is a very complex sound. Which have built up from originally just you and piano. It starts very, very, very quiet.

And then it builds. And builds. But the complexity about the sound world of that chorus is not based in the cause. It's based in the sounds because the sound of 5,000 voices singing, is gorgeous. Anyway. There's also this heartbeat, you know. And so you feel this stuff.

And it's the juxtaposition and the complementation between some of these sounds and the lyrics. I think that's what hits you dimensionally in the feels with this song. So, you know, as you say, I think harmonically the song is quite an open song. It's quite simple, which I really love. I love E-flat major. It's just like probably the sweetest key. And so the verses just exist in this world. And the bridges kind of move around a little bit.

The first one doesn't go too far out. Because you're not so far away, I hear you say. That's a little bit of sweetness. You'll never walk alone. So really, the furthest you've gone from your home key V flat major is, is changing this D to a D flat. It's just a little bit of darkness. Well, in doing so, this is what I really love about the song.

It's an appropriate moment. We're talking about feeling far away. And now it's like, okay, we do have to go somewhere that isn't totally safe. Right, well, the song is about the idea of being far from home and finding home, which is a theme I often write, I often find myself writing about. It's kind of what the first song of the album is about, too, but in a very different way. But to accurately describe and portray the feeling of being away from home and then returning home, you've got to move people outside of the world.

So, yeah, going to D-flat just feels like you've made enough contrast to then when you come back into this world. Like, the sun's come out again? Yeah, yeah. And the second bridge goes further out. It goes, because you're not so far away. I hear you see. Which is already a big departure.

You'll never walk alone. Which is, that's the furthest you get away from the key, where E major is like, definitely not E flat major. And we're back to E flat. So it's just about weaving enough contrast into the story so that the lyrics are relevant to the structure and to the narrative. But perhaps a younger version of yourself might not have that same kind of narrative connection. You know, I feel like especially as like an earlier student of music. I don't know when this might have been in your life.

But there might just been like, I'm just going to throw in this crazy run for no good purpose because it's really neat. Because it's really fun. Yeah. And fun is sometimes a perfectly good reason to do something. Yeah, for sure. But sometimes if it doesn't fit the purpose of the song. Yeah, exactly. I think that the songs tell you what they need,

and the more songs you write, the more you realize what's possible with them. I would say, you know, even to kind of knowing myself as I did when I was 18 or 19, I think that version of Jacob would definitely still have said that every note and every passage, there's a reason for it being there, and every note helps the story to be told.

I think they were just different stories in a sense. I think I was just so ravenous at 18 to try and push and explore and do all the stuff that, you know, you would just be so many different ideas in one go. And I think that in some ways my attention span has grown. And I think in other ways I perceive them as equally complex, but in different ways. And I think with Little Blue, one thing I'm proud of is the sound world,

the sonically the world of it, because I think that there's dimension in that really felt new in writing it and in mixing it and crafting it. And I think that world contains kind of almost as much depth as some of these like crazy chords do. They're also wonderful. Yeah, which are really fun. But it's like it's a different kind of depth. And I'm proud of the space that I believe there is for people to walk in and find themselves in the song.

All right. So Jesse Four is complete. So it's a little bit sad. It's wild. I can't believe it's finished. What have you learned about yourself in the creation? Maybe we can contain it to, you know, this. particular piece of the project or if you want, the whole project.

Yeah. And what do you want to do? Yeah. Well, it's funny. When I started Jesse and I made the plan for it, I remember writing this down on the, I think I wrote on like a text edit, but one of my ideas was like, by the end of this, by the end of Jesse Volume 4, which is way in the distance back then, I will be ready to start my career.

That was what I kind of, that was what I planned. I thought, I will have learned enough about music in these different areas to, and have first-hand experience with it, if all goes to plan, to be able to contribute something of genuine value in all these different walks of life, whatever I'm called to do. Okay, but let's just be clear, in the process of doing this, you have also connected with the most spectacular musicians on the planet. Yeah, it's meaningful. I remember seeing you years ago, maybe 2018 or 2019, and both Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock

were in the front row of the balcony watching you, and I was just like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine what it would be, and I know that these are friends. It's just been a wild, wild journey. So you're going to start your career now. Were you thinking accounting? Were you thinking a teacher? Yeah, I might go into sort of Olympic skiing or something. But I wanted to feel like I had gone to the temples or gone to the places of all these parts of music that I've loved and been fascinated with for so long.

And in so doing, I've just learned so much more than I had planned to learn. I began my career being obsessed with the human voice and the power of the human. voice and what it could do. I wanted to... Which is where we begin and where we end. Yes, exactly. I wanted to stretch in some of those early acapella videos, how much could I say and do and explain with my voice, you know, sing the bass part, the tenor part, the outer part, and whatever, and make these one-man vocal worlds.

And I was obsessed with the human voice, and I was obsessed with the idea of harmony being the relationship between things in the world. And, you know, 10 years later, it's the same fascination. But I feel like I've learned so... so much more about me, about myself and about my own voice, you could say, through the lens of all these other people's voices in the world. And getting to know some of these collaborators is a revelation in so many ways musically and non-musically. And I think there's so much that we

have in common as people. And whether you're speaking with some of these world leaders of music, pop music and some of the most beloved people on the planet, or you're speaking to a musician who's just beginning their journey, it's kind of this, it's kind of like the same things matter. It's like, you know, what gives me goosebumps? Does it, does it make me dance? Am I proud of it? Is it accurate to my perspective? You know, all these things. I've learned to be patient. I have learned to be patient. I've learned to dig deeper into how I honestly truly feel about the world. I think I've learned how to be, how to be courageous with space and also how to be courageous with filling space. I think, I think there's, there's a, there's a,

a sort of myth that I perceived when I was growing up. It's the idea that if you're your biggest self, if you're the biggest, most brazen version of yourself that exists, then somehow you're going to remove space for others. There'll be less space for other people to be their big, beautiful selves and whatever. But I really deeply believe that's not true. And I think it's one thing I've really learned with these collaborations. The bigger you are, the more comfortable you feel in yourself, the more space there is for the people around you to be their big, beautiful selves. And I, know this from experience because I've gone into sessions being quite meek, you know, kind of like, oh, whatever you want to do. I don't know, whatever you want to do. And it's way harder to meet

someone as an equal in that situation than if you walk into a room and say, these are my ideas, this is how I see the world. I may be wrong. I may be weird or bizarre or whatever, but this is just, this is me. This is me. And the more I've learned to do that as a person on stage in the studio, as a producer, and just as a person, I think the more space I've perceived there being, available to others around me to bring their selves. It's all welcome when I make music and I make it from a true place of Jacobness. I think what it does at its best for me is it reminds me that the world is so much bigger than me and there's still so much to learn. So we've gone from being in your room to having created this entire multiverse of music. Yeah. It's an incredible gift.

Really thank you for sharing it so candidly. Oh, you know, thanks, thanks for receiving it. Can I ask you one bonus question? Of course. This is a question the friend really wanted me to ask. Do you dream in music? Do I dream in music? I'll tell you a story, actually. This is a funny story about this album.

I don't normally dream songs, right? I hear stories, people being like, I had this dream and I wrote a whole song and I woke up and then I just had that was the song. And I always just think, well, that must be nice. I had no experience of that. Then about five or six months ago, I had a dream. And in the dream, I was with this group of friends, I guess they were musicians, a lot of my friends of musicians.

And we were playing a game, one of those dreams where it doesn't quite make sense, but it makes complete sense at the same time. And the game was, you pick up these, it's almost like dye, like, you know, rolling, rolling die. You pick up these dice and you throw them. And they weren't really dice. They were like weird dream state. globules of like undefined matter. But anyway, we threw them on the table and whatever words

it landed as saying, you had to write that song. So I, in the dream, picked up these globules sort of dream state, globules of cuboid matter, threw them on the table. And on the table it said, she put sunshine.

That's what it said on the table. And so in the dream, I was kind of like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'll write that song then. And then I woke up. And I was like, well, I obviously have to write the song, Sheeper Sunshine. So I sat in my bed on my laptop and I just wrote the lyrics. And it was almost like someone had been like,

this song needs to be written. You can't change the title. I can't tell you how helpful it was not to be able to change the title because if you can change the title, then everything can fall apart at any moment. It's like the main North Stars is gone and the indecision takes over. This song had to be called Sheep at Sunshine. And I wrote the song in, it was like an hour.

And then I went downstairs. I spent the whole day recording the song, and that's the second song on the record. I've never had that experience before. It was the first time ever. And I really enjoyed it because it was like something was speaking through me that it was unavailable to be altered by me. And my opinion of it couldn't shift it. My mind moves so quickly that if I'm normally from writing a song, I could just change my mind. It's like, oh, now, I was using a constant chatter.

That held me together for just long enough that I wrote this song. And yeah, so that actually is an experience I've had with dreaming in music, and I would like to do more of that kind of thing. Not that it's within my control necessarily, but it was fun. Do you mind, could you hear maybe just the chorus of that song and say goodbye? Yeah, of course. God, what key is that song in Sinji, I think? Yeah, so the chorus of that song goes,

And I get a little lonely, and she comes to me. She eluvonates me And if she ever gets close to me Well, it's plain to see She didn't see her in the rain mean But I can't help her Giving me her sunshine smile Good

But that sunshine smile Thank you, Jacob That was so beautiful Thanks so much That was what a delight Switched on Pop is produced by Charlie Harding And me, Nate Sloan Our producer is Rihanna Cruz.

Our editor is Art Chung. Brandon McFarland does our mixing and engineering. Abibar, Community Management, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, and Ashok Kerwa is our executive producer. We're a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network and New York Mags Vulture. You can find more episodes of our show

anywhere you get podcasts. You can check out our website, switched on pop.com. We can also sign up for our newsletter. And we'll be back next. Tuesday with a brand new episode. If there's anything you think of between now and then, reach out to us on social media at Switched on Pop and tell us what you're hearing. Tell us what you love about Jacob Collier. Tell us anything else that's on your mind. Occasionally we do a listener

mailbag episode and that's always fun. So we love hearing what your burning musical questions are. I think all that remains is for me to say thanks for listening. and batter records of with the form of with a form of the pay with a better conversion

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