“I started right here, in my little room in London where I grew up,” says the 31-year-old British singer-songwriter Jacob Collier. “I never really had big dreams as a child of being a big music celebrity or anything like that.”
If you know Jacob, you would know the room — the shelves stacked with instruments, the warm fairy lights, and the quiet chaos that has birthed one of the most fascinating musical experiments of our time. On a late Friday evening in Chennai, I find myself on a video call with him in that very space, ahead of the Djesse Vol. 4 India tour. Before the interview begins, the tabla on his shelf catches my eye. Jacob proudly swivels his camera, giving me a closer look.
The performer’s walk to fame took off in 2013 at a time when YouTube was still a space of creative self-expression. He first captured global attention with his split-screen covers, densely layered vocal harmonies and arrangements that felt more like theatrical feats than mere songs.
His multi-tracked rendition of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing’ in 2013 on YouTube did not just go viral; it caught the eye of American record producer and composer Quincy Jones, setting off a trajectory that would see him collaborate with the likes of Joni Mitchell, SZA, Bon Iver, Coldplay, Shawn Mendes, John Mayer, and many more. “I really concentrated on making things that I found beautiful. That was my whole goal,” he says.
Jacob is the first British artist to have won a Grammy for each of his first five albums.
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“The more I tried to make beautiful stuff, the more I met interesting people, and that slowly expanded my sense of what was possible. I’ve always had an unusual attitude toward the idea of impossible — I’ve done quite a few things that hadn’t been done before, whether that means turning an audience into a choir, designing new instruments, touring as a one-man band, or whatever it happens to be,” he adds.
In 2016, Jacob took home his first Grammy for his debut album ‘In My Room’. Since then, he has held the record of being the first British artist to have won a Grammy for each of his first five albums.
Jacob’s harmonic imagination shows up everywhere in his tracks; his a cappella cover of the famous song ‘Moon River’ is a classic example. The multi-layered vocal arrangement features thousands of vocal tracks, including thousands of his own and contributions from numerous musical friends and fans. Same with ‘Bleak Midwinter’, which featuresa multi-tracked vocal arrangement of the timeless Christmas carol, released in 2016. The arrangement is noted for its complex harmonies, use of microtones, and dense textural layers. He states, “One thing that might set my sense of harmony apart is that I’m genuinely comfortable with dissonance. I love chords that are really spicy or vividly colourful. There’s so much beauty in those sounds, but for me, it’s less about the notes themselves and more about the attitude you bring to them.”
Jacob says “one the most beautiful things about the last few years is that I’ve actually been able to travel all over the world, meet musicians, and ask them questions and as a lifelong student of life and music, it’s a real thrill to listen to these incredible musicians and then meet them in person — and realise just how much we all have in common. At the end, we are all struggling after the same things.”
Volume four to me was like a love letter to human life and the music of the world, says Jacob.
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Jacob is heading back to India, this time as part of his sprawling Djesse Vol. 4 world tour. Released on February 29 2024, it marks the grand finale of Jacob’s audacious four-part musical odyssey. From John Legend and Tori Kelly to Shawn Mendes, Stormzy, Brandi Carlile, and Lizzy McAlpine, the project is a musical universe in itself that Jacob has spent years building. Each track becomes a meeting point where pop, gospel, classical, folk and global traditions collide.
“Volume four to me was like a love letter to human life and the music of the world. As someone who loves so many different types of music, I wanted to pay homage to all these different forms.” For the album, Collier brought together more than 100,000 people from all walks of life — not just audience members but artists from every continent.
The project also features collaborators such as Anoushka Shankar alongside Varijashree Venugopal, as well as Camilo from Colombia, Aespa from South Korea, the Metropole Orkest from Netherlands, and gospel legend Kirk Franklin from the United States. “The kind of principles that power it are the same as the ones that powered my room. Within my room, I often like to layer my own voice on top of itself. So you’d have like five or six or 10 or 20 different Jacob’s singing different notes in chords, and that was how I created harmony.”
Beginning his India tour in Bengaluru, I can already sense the glint of excitement in his eyes. “I’ve always thought of India as one of the most legendary places for music. It’s so many things I care about, whether it is the rhythm and its incredible depth, the microtonal tunings, or even the spiritual dimensions of music. It’s such an amazing thing that I’m able to visit now, and to be able to learn first-hand from the greatness that comes from that beautiful place.”
Having watched him grow from a YouTube prodigy into a global phenomenon, I asked Jacob what guidance he had offer young musicians finding their footing — he admits there is no rulebook. “The truth is, no one really knows what’s going on, and no one knows what the ‘next best move’ should be. So the only real answer is to stay open and to be completely fearless about what you love.”
Djesse Vol. 4 India tour will begin in Bengaluru on November 28, then Mumbai on November 31, and finally Delhi NCR on December 2. Tickets at skillboxes.com
Published – November 24, 2025 12:53 pm IST