Viral Music Phenom Jacob Collier: This “Life-Changing” Moment Unlocked New Creative Powers

hello and welcome back to the great creators I'm guy RZ this is the video version of our audio podcast which you can find wherever you listen to podcast but of course you are watching the video version so welcome this is where I speak to some of the most incredible performers artists singers musicians of our time and my guest today needs almost no introduction on YouTube he is the multi-talented multi-instrumentalist Jacob klier Jak blew people away with his one-man band cover songs as a teenager now Five albums and five Grammys later Jacob's collaborating with a-listers and even conducting 30,000 people audience choirs plus you'll hear Jacob's thoughts on where creativity comes from I think everybody inherently has in them something that wants to live desperately and I feel like there's never a point where it's too late to Kindle that force and a behind the scenes look at his star started album Jesse volume 4 so I I I messag him like hey T man like what's up you know he was like oh Jacob and I'm I'm I'm such a fan whatever and I was just so blown away then he just crushed it it was so amazing so without further Ado here's my conversation with Jacob ker Jacob thanks thanks so much for for jumping on let's talk a little bit about about your I mean you you were born and raised in London and it happens that you were you grew up in a musical family your mom is a musician so I'm assuming and maybe I'm wrong that from an early age I mean you were you were listening to her play the violin at home do you know my earliest memory that I can remember from my not only from my musical life but for my human existence is actually sitting about where I'm sitting right now which is in this little corner of this little room which I adore in London and I would sit on my mother's lap while she was playing the violin above me and I would look up and see the violin it was like it was the ceiling above my head and like this resonant singing ceiling and um that memory kind of I mean it just it went so deep for me it it goes so deep for me still and yeah it was it was kind of a bit of a second language growing up I guess for me a listener avid player Avid singer um and you know all of my family are you could say sort of introverts but have deep inner worlds and I think all of us have found um music to be a very very value and Rich companion to all stages of life right from the very very Beginnings to the to to the to the present moment and I'm really lucky to have had that access to not just the the the breadth of music but just the kind of curiosity about music like how does this work why do I feel like this when I hear this cord or this sound you know why how does the how is the energy controlled and you know what what are the human beings trying to say and all these different axes at play I love the the whole process I loved um I was surprised surprised and I it may be wrong but I from what I gather you didn't actually take music lessons until later on you took singing lessons is that right that's true that is true you're bang on um yeah the one thing I had formal training with before the age of about 16 15 16 was the voice um turns out that's quite a good thing to learn how to control you know you learn how to breathe properly which helps your whole life you learn how to stand properly um how to project and all these different things but at the rest of it I really yeah I kind of I picked it up as I went along and I was very interested in how to be a bass player or how to be a drummer and how to be a piano player and I didn't know these things officially you know there was no qualifications that I had other than my deep interest and I had a microphone it was a very very simple microphone called an sm58 microphone by sure sure it's a classic like mic classic like you'd find it in any jam session in the world yes and a little computer which is about where this computer is that I'm looking at your face into now and I I yeah I would I I would layer up these different sounds to imitate and replicate the things I was hearing in the world around me so lots of different vocals and harmonies the way they can layer up and and eventually you know more instruments and things like that too but yeah I was I was lucky to have this space I still am very lucky to have this space I want to go back to instruments for a moment because given that your mom is a professional violinist we'll talk about this later because she performs with you and is recorded with you but she was a Prof professor at the Royal Academy your I guess your her grandfather or your grandfather was also violinist to tire at the Royal Academy so this is quite a pedigree and yet your mom didn't push instruments on you didn't make you or or encourage you to learn an instrument as a as a like a two-year-old or a three-year-old no it wasn't like that at all which I I I'm so deeply grateful for I can't tell you that the number of people I've met friends of mine or or fans of mine who have said you know I I did love music when I was really young and then I was forced to play the piano every day by this like Titan of a teacher and I fell out of love and it's just so sad but yeah my my mom is a yeah she's a she's a really her mind is just wide open um and yeah to me I I I do remember being handed a violin when I was about two and it was kind of like this is a violin one of many friends that you may make in this world and we kind of got along a bit me and the violin but by the time I was four I think I kind of I think me and the violin had had reached our tenure it was it was time to move on u i I don't think I quite had the patience for it because with the violin you know it takes you could argue many years to make one note sound beautiful in the violin it can take a number of years of experience and patience and listening and I think as a child I I wanted more immediate results perhaps I wanted something to go whiz or bang when I hit it and um so I I kind of gravitated towards yeah the voice which is inherent for all of us but also the piano which is yeah sorry no no no go ahead what do you there's a bit of a delay sometimes so I'm sorry what do you remember about wanting to learn how to sing we've we've had pop singers on the show like I I can think of like Ellie Golding or Jason Derulo who from from as long as I can remember they were singing or you know even Shania Twain from from yeah from their juwel from the time they were three show tunes or you know pop songs I mean were you and there's a definitely a certain type of kid who's like that I mean I know that you've described yourself as an introvert and as somebody who was more sort of quieter but I wonder were you that were you that kind of kid who was just always singing in the house and singing in the shower or or was it just something that I don't know you kind of came to in a in a different way it's actually a really interesting question I I definitely wasn't a theater kid in that sense I I didn't parade myself about or exaggerate my behavior um for others I I think I exaggerated inwards perhaps so I would I would feel a lot of things vividly and I would seek ways of explaining them and I I don't think I ever identified as you know having this dream of standing on a stage and being like man I'm going to sing and the whole crowd was going to be there it's going to be amazing I think I thought more you know I I want to like craft stuff that I care about um didn't really matter whether it was with the voice or whether it was with the piano or anything else um sometimes wasn't with music at all but I think the the idea that I could I could be a Craftsman I think that appealed to me a great deal more than being a showman and the funny thing about that is that when I began my you could say so quote unquote career about 10 years ago and started to share the early videos that you mentioned on on YouTube multi-instrumental multivocal harmonizations of things to now I'm about to release this fifth album of mine um I've fallen so deeply in love with playing on stage that I almost don't recognize the version of myself who would ra who would rather stay indoors um you know I began my live performance Journey with a oneman show I told with a one man show for about 3 years that was what I performed with at Ted that year in 2017 when you were there and um yeah that whole era was fascinating because it was the first time I'd ever kind of attempted that that thing of standing on a stage and sharing ideas and and building grooves and and making a a valuable experience for people and the the yeah I guess they're now seven s years since that since that moment 2017 um my yeah my my sort of soul and um mind have just kind of become so much more open to what the world can feel like when you say hey I'm on a stage but I'm not necessarily in command here like I I I rever my audiences I think they're wonderful and I I they're very much a part of the band in my performances and I think that that's that's a part of the the the journey that I've been on and I'm still on to kind of find that level of of uh of joy and and and and comfort you know on on stage but it's a wonderful feeling and and uh now I would say is the time I've most identified as the person who loves that when I was two or three I just like to like put all my marbles in symmetrical order and stay indoors you know when when you were taking lessons right and and you come from a country with a rich tradition of like boys choirs definitely you know and and was that the kind of singing that you that you were learning how to do yeah actually like super pure and yeah glassy you could say like not so much like not that kind of thing more like you know and churchy Cathedrals you could say yeah Cathedral or something Cathedral suppose you'd say um yeah there's something about the the voice of a young boy that hangs in a cathedral that's really haunting really kind of tender and moving fragile yet strong um that there's a whole lineage of music that was composed for that kind of voice and um yeah I was really lucky to find my way into into that scene and um at that age was just like mind blown by the kinds of options that I that that were available to some of those some some of the composers of of those times um and yeah I I came into the sort of you know I guess you could say singing more popularist song type stuff much later on uh it's it's all the same technique you know it's all the same breathing and projecting and resonance and stuff like that but uh I think I was interested I you know I'm always kind of proud of being English and being yeah as you say from a country filled with such Legends you know people like William bird and Thomas Talis and all these like just absolute Titans of of coral music you could say and and I have always so deeply loved the idea of the human voice and the potential it has to lift and augment life and so I think I had firstand experience as a kid of that exact feeling and there's nothing like singing in a cathedral there's just nothing like that feeling I don't I don't know if you've ever done it but it's just amazing feeling I I I'm interested in how how instruments entered your life because from from what I gather it wasn't a formal process it was like you used your voice to figure you knew the sounds that your voice could make because a voice is an instrument and you wanted to figure out how you could replicate or sort of you know approximate those vocal sounds with an instrument I guess starting with a Casio Keyboard ah how do you know this stuff um this it's very very true I wanted to find the edge of my voice uh and as a child the edge of your voice is like cuz that's like your lowest note you know yeah um and then gradually that increases but you know I my attitude to creativity in general was I will use the things I have around me whatever they are to make things I care about and I didn't have a bunch of instruments growing up really I had the the family piano which was like one of my dearest Companions and I had I think there was a guitar that came into my life that one up there actually when I was about 13 um I think I I found my way into into the hands of a Bas when I was about 14 or so but but really A lot of it was like sauce Spin and spoons and like I've got this basket of spoons right here that I still use as a Shaker slh hat and this is just filled with my grandfather's Cutlery you know um and so I I think yeah I think for me it was it wasn't so much a bunch of instruments it was it was the idea that you don't I didn't have a I didn't have a huge amount to create with but I had a massive appetite for creativity and the one thing I always had was my voice so I would use my voice to yeah you could say recreate sounds of instruments I didn't have like like trumpets and trombones and flutes and clarinets or whatever happened to be to try and make the sound bigger and the amazing thing about that CIO keyboard um and I think anyone who's listening to this who has ever had either had a child who's played with Cass keyboards or been one of those children themselves elves it's it's a joyous uh occasion for the child it could be very probably very irritating for those surrounding the child at times but you know a CIO keyboard or keyboard of any brand contains within it say like 100 rhythms and 200 sounds and so the rhythms might be kind of like bosanova or reggae or poker or you know rock and roll and then there's there's a bunch of presets and it's like kind of approximates to the genre and then the sounds you know filled with all sorts of interesting things I'd never seen like a tubular bell I've never seen that or Appalachian Mountain damer like what even is that I have no idea but I know what it sounds like it sounds like you know on the keyboard so I think I I've always been kind of um proud and grateful for the time in which I grew up because it was a time where access to ingredients or creative components was was on the rise I think it's been exponentially On The Rise since I first touched a musical instrument there's been a greater and great increasingly greater amount of access um to sounds and and the world of sculpt ing them in a way that I have really really enjoyed so when I kind of you could say graduated from my little Casio keyboard to logic which is like a one of the many um audio softwares that we musicians can use to record logic was a bit like a Casio Keyboard on steroids you know it contained like tons more sounds than I'd ever even imagined all these orchestral instruments and and drum sounds and all sorts of stuff so I really enjoyed the process of kind of learning firsthand by touching all these materials like what can this stuff mean what can it do and joining the dots between things I heard on CDs or heard on the radio whatever growing up and i' I'd recreate my own version of that for fun and that's that was ended up being a very valuable way of me learning some of those early ropes you know um as you you sort of began to gain recognition for your your singing abilities you you were in some some theater you were in theater and some even some films I saw you you can find this on YouTube you're you're portraying Tiny Tim in a in a television um version of A Christmas Carol that came out in 2004 it's amazing but I wonder how how much of a voice right of of you learning how to use your voice and how to control it how much of that it becomes a skill that you can actually really work with and how much of that is just what you're gifted with like your range your whether your voice is good or not I mean you know is it is is somebody like you and this is may be a hard question for you to answer but a Critic would be better to answer the question but like were you good at at singing Because you naturally had a good voice or because you were really determined to figure out like how to stretch all of the different ways you could use it it's a really interesting question um I think I think the question it begs in return is how you would Define good um and this is actually something I think a lot about as a creative person because you can Define good in many ways um it's risky in some ways to define something as objectively good uh David burn who is one of my favorite singers of all time who many You could argue would would say he's one of one of the least qualified singers in the world um he he he said this beautiful thing once which I'll never forget which is the better the singer's voice the more difficult it is for me to understand what they're singing about um which I just think is so so marvelous because you know sometimes you have these very pristine well-trained voices maybe theater voices or operatic voices or pop voices whatever any kind of voice Jazz voice and if the technique is good enough like so good then it can get to the point where you can't feel what's behind the voice and and you can't discern any of those imperfections you can't relate to the voice in any way um and I think the funny thing about my training and my priorities as a composer and artist is I never really thought of myself as a singer you know in the same way I never really thought of myself as a piano player or a bass player or clarinetist or anything I just thought of myself as a musician you know someone who loves music and wants to make music so I think for me my voice became a part of my my palette um I never really tried to be a really really great kind of say pop singer or jazz singer but I loved and continued to love absorbing from all these different worlds and ways you can sing as a as a singer and and just kind of combining all that stuff in ways that I find interesting and you know in the last few years I've collaborated with like over a hundred different different musicians for this sort of ever sprawling album cycle I've been working on and have almost completed and um every one of them has their own voice you know and it's just been such a privilege to get to learn firsthand from all these different kinds of voices whether it's Chris Martin or stormy or Shawn Mendes to Rapid D or Tori Kelly um um sangari from Malay or um Hamed alri from Morocco you know every every one of these types of voices the tomra voice is so different that if there's one thing I know for certain is that it's impossible to say well this is a good singer and this singers this is a bad singer because it just depends where you come from it depends what your priorities are it depends who you're singing for if you're singing for anybody um and I think that yeah some of my favorite moments recording vocals and Performing vocals are the moments where I'm the least perhaps I'm the least refined um and I think that's that again is a little bit of a paradox about the idea that you know you're trained to be good uh at things and you should be as good as you can and the idea that you're good if you're refined or you're perfect I think is is not only slightly misguided but it can be very unhelpful for anybody who's trying to make a thing yeah how did you get to that place right because you were trained and then you went to a high school that was for performing artists and there is a level of performance and trying to you know hit what this notion of what it means to be perfect or near perfect and and it just reminds me of this interview I did many years ago with a Ted speaker and well he's a famous neuroscientist named Charles Lim and he brings Jazz musicians and performers into an F MRI I've seen I think I've I've seen some of this stuff you see right and he asks them to perform and he finds that their their creative their creativity or what what we think we can measure as creativity in the brain is just firing on all cylinders when they're less worried about making mistakes and they're just they're they're you know they're less sort of worried about being judged and I wonder how you got to this place of you know being on stage as a kid being in in some television singing uh W with your peers to a place where you could you know you could really experiment and you didn't have to worry or you felt like you didn't have to worry so much about whether you were sounding the way you thought you should sound yeah it's a great qu such such an important question I I will say I I definitely struggled um at school and in in and around some of those things I did as a child to find that feeling and I think it's because school I mean it's it's a weird it's a weird old place school I think certainly for anybody who's creatively inclined um you know I went to a very ordinary in UK we we call them secondary school so from the age of 11 to 15 I was surrounded by kind of every different kind of person you can imagine um not not remotely a music school but a school filled with all sorts of different kinds of people and then the last two years of my schooling I went to the school that I think you you mentioned which is called the perel scho which is for young young musicians and in neither in neither environment did I feel like I really found my people it wasn't it wasn't so much like oh you know you you perform you perform on stage so I can relate to you or you know you are um you know you you you play sports or you're interested in say you're interested in soccer you know like that wasn't that wasn't necessarily the place where I found my where I found my people I I had a a dual existence you could say in in the school situation where the school system was very kind of lurgical and straight lines and discipline oriented and you have a detention if you do the wrong thing and all this kind of stuff to my home environment which as I previously mentioned was just so much more capacious for um kind of like whatever feels right is right and um the the balance I think in my life between those two forces is very interesting and something I've thought a lot about um over the years and it wasn't really till I left the school system that I really feel I feel like I found that feeling of oh so the best thing I can be for this audience is not the thing that they I think they want me to be it's actually just me the way I am you know and um and I think you know I'm I'm still I'm still learning learning that feeling now and and I'm very grateful for every opportunity I get to explore it um but I I think that the world is you know it's it's an exaggerated world of judgment right now you have these interesting apertures you've got the internet you've got social media you've got yeah um even AI you know which itself is is of inherently built to exaggerate existing forms and I think it's a it's a bizarre time to find confidence because I think that certain parts of of confidence come from um yeah you could say not conforming to or not trying to conform to one idea of right or wrong uh I definitely know it to be true and and have seen similar adjacent studies that say you know if you're if you're afraid of making mistakes you're going to take fewer creative Liberties fewer things are going to fire off in your brain you're going to have less access to the to that kind of all those temples of ideas um I think I'm I'm really really grateful honestly for my for for my mother who who no matter what educational system I was in in some ways it went from the education system to the the music industry and they're both as bizarre as each other you know in terms of prejudice and all sorts of um things and uh you know ideas and and hard lines and disciplines and then uncertainty and all sorts of things and you know I end up on on different sides of the line for all those things you know certain things are perhaps easier for me as a as a white man and other things are harder for me as a as a non-conformist in terms of genre for example but I think I'm very grateful for my mother for no matter where I was or what system I was in sort of saying the the thing that really matters to me as in to my mother but also to me is that the voice I'm using is my own voice and that that comes from the the the right place and I think that if there's one thing I'm most proud of in my career of the last 10 years which is continuing and and um and ever revolving I think I'm proud that I haven't lost any of that um side of things and I've I've never compromised the thing that feels right for me for for the for the the kind like to to over somebody else's ideas of what's right and wrong and and some of that you can plan the the idealist the ideals that you can plan and the rest I I just have to be grateful for the the components in my life that got me to to to evolve to be that person if that makes sense um I think the first time I I I remember seeing you was the video of Pure Imagination I may have seen it a year or two after it came out but that video you made I think you were 16 still in high school um and it's you singing Pure Imagination from Wily Wonka in the Chocolate Factory beautiful song um and it's for people haven't seen it's multiple screens and it's you um harmonizing with yourself and it's it's really beautiful and really complex and I um and I wonder how how that came up because that would have that really CH changed your life I mean that set you off on a career path that maybe you didn't anticipate yeah gosh we're going back in time now a long time that's that was 13 years ago yeah and I was obsessed with Harmony you could say the the the idea of music that you put notes together and you create narratives out of it like that's just oh what a cool idea I was obsessed and um you know UK could say music is essentially at its simplest divided into three main kind of schools of thought or or or categories one being Rhythm and time the second being Melody and line and the third being Harmony and chords and relationships you could say in the world Harmony is the the relationship is between things and and I loved it so much and one of the best ways I had found by at that by that point to to stretch myself was take a song that I love so Pure Imagination is like one of the best songs ever written it's just such a beautiful tune as as you well know um and I took that song for for a for a ride in the Jacob Express and wanted to see where IID kind of where where it might land so I I was kind of at that time especially just like ravenous for um to to to surprise myself honestly to to to to go in unexpected directions to create unexpected contexts so you know that song uh which in essence is kind of I mean it's not the most simple of tunes but it's quite repetitive there's a form you know you hear that like six times by the end of the song one time through so it's it's it's an easy recognizable tune so I thought okay well this is such a this song has such a strong identity How can I create contrast and stretch myself and have fun and make this as beautiful as I can so I I really stretched it out and took it for a right and I mean me at age 16 17 was was like you know wanting to yeah wanting to find the edge of all the things I understood so so I did I did a rendition of that song I think that my vertion was in five beats in a bar or five beats per measure which essentially in a lot of music you have songs in four so you know Pure Imagination inherently the original is in four as in do one two to three four to one four one you know but mine was in five so it was all choppy and junky you know s of jagged and irregular and I loved all that stuff it gave me such a such a thrill um and so yeah I I took that took that tune for a spin and I recorded all these different Harmony Parts saying the bass and tenno and Alto soprano pots whatever I was hearing threw it into logic mixed it up made a video put it online and I did that with a few different songs at that time do a few Stevie Wonder songs and sure everybody thing yeah yeah that that was that was that was a big moment for sure a couple of St Wonder Yeah couple other stev Wonder songs besides and there's a Michael Jackson song I did and some old Jazz Tes I was just like so interested like what what's the furthest I can push my my my um experience of music and I wasn't particularly interested in building an audience or kicking off a career I was interested in how much fun can this be to create you know and and so I was kind of blow just completely blown away and taken by surprise when some of those videos began to kind of go a little bit bananas in the music communities around the world because you know it turns out there were other people in other countries of the world besides London who also loved chords and Harmony and who kind of enjoyed and appreciated my my sort of irreverent harmonic experiments of sorts um so I remember receiving an email from Quincy Jones amazing when I was about 18 years old right when I released that don't about think crazy I mean I mean I was absolutely certain that one of my mates was just pulling a like a very well executed prank you know like hey man Quincy Jones here you're you sound great but the truth is it was the real Quincy Jones um you know speak of Masters of the unexpected masters of their craft people who have who have belonged to and contributed to such a variety of different disciplines from big band arranging trumpet playing producing um collaborations Crossing cultural boundaries scoring for film collaborating with all some some of the greatest artists of all time Frank SRA El Fitzgerald the L list is endless so for me at that time as as just you know a kid in his room literally this room I'm speaking to you from right now it was the most profound feeling to for the world to shrink that fast and it was kind of like wow so so now Quincy Jones is just like one Gmail click away and that's it's amazing that's amazing and and um and kind of never you know never never gets old and I remember flying I took a flight to Mont in Switzerland to the monu jazz festival which one of the most legendary music festivals of all time time that Quincy helped to found in the 60s and Quincy kind of goes every year and he he's like the king of the castle I remember going to montro by myself it's my first ever plane ride by myself and um and I I went to meet the great man and shake his hand and we hung out all night he was telling stories of hang out with Picasso and Stravinsky and Bernstein and all these just in just insane stories and I think I think for me it was it was just such a moment of of recognizing how it didn't matter how old you were or how experienced you were or how famous you were either you had that that creative spark and that bug that you got like oh man I'm so interested in the world I want to understand the world I want to contribute to the world I want to learn or you didn't have that bug and it's just kind of like one of those things and I I just like I forgot that I mean Quincy now is 90 years old but at that time he was I think 81 and I forgot he was 81 I thought he was and I forgot that I was 19 you know I I I just felt like we were two people hanging out and nerding out over interesting spiky cords and it was just a beautiful moment you know you this idea of of curiosity and creativity and and there's and you mentioned this idea that you you you have the spark and you pursue it or you don't but I wonder whether you think that that spark is like you know something that falls from the sky or it's something that you can see that somebody could pursue it's a fantastic question I I I do believe that what if I if I were to think about how how do I Define you know life force you could say how do you measure life force or um Vitality or even Consciousness I think I think that is what I think that is what that is I think everybody inherently has in them something that wants to live desperately I want to live I want to see the world I want to smell the world I want to taste the world everything I think if if that Force did not exist in in in a person then they wouldn't be they wouldn't be alive and and I feel like there's never a point where it's too late to Kindle that Force that's one thing I do believe um all of us as human beings I think the force comes goes up and down over time I can think of moments where I was just turned on by everything in the world it was like oh my word I just want to live so hard this is crazy and then other moments where you know I kind of needed to to to absorb more energy and rekindle and take time and that's that's all part of the journey but I think that you know I think that yeah there's something beautiful about being here on this planet for no apparent reason um without instructions there's no manual you just kind of go out and and be you and uh and you know I often think about what I have the privilege of doing for a living which is essentially being really fascinated for a living um I wonder if you'd feel the same but I think the the idea that you get to continuously open your mind to new things is it is amazing I do think you can cultivate the spark I think you can learn it um I think it's a bit like yeah I I think a lot about this idea of almost like internal weather you know how when you wake up in the morning you open the blinds is like hey oh okay today is cloudy and there's a bit of sun and it's kind of cold but there's no wind you know and every day has has a different set of parameters that with which you can determine how you want to do how you want to do your day you know so say for example you're a surfer like a good friend of mine is an Avid surfer and so he'll obsess check the the the weather and the waves every morning like okay the the the um the TI's up this amount and then the surf's about this High and the wind is this amount and whatever and he'll he he will learn the conditions the external conditions needed for him to be the best surfer he can on that day and there is an amount that's like you need to show up and surf no matter what and then there's an amount that's like you need to ride the wave no matter what it is and I I think about this internally a lot of the time as someone who performs and and creates and composes and all such things because I think that my job is in a sense is the same thing but internally and externally at times it's to observe the conditions that I find myself in no matter what they may be and you know some sometimes the conditions are perfect and sometimes the conditions are really hard um life is very very unpredictable but I think the the the job of an artist and the beauty of of the job of an artist is to to to to um Garner a skill set which is capable of alchemizing the world as they see it no matter what that world may be and pursue the science of presenting that world in a way that that kind of increases that spark it in in in the artist's own heart and in the hearts of the people that the artist is is reaching and I think that there's there's there's an art and a science to listening to yourself and and observing yourself and and observing the world and and learning to recognize Sparks in people and and and how how to grow them um one one thing one thing I'll say about a spark I think that I've learned is I've I've almost learned more about cultivating Sparks in people I love than in myself at times so you know if I see say say for example you know my my sister say my sister's going through something tough um and she's kind of lost the spark but I know my sister I know there's the spark in there I know I know how that spark can come about it's like my job as her friend and her brother is to is to learn to it's like to remind her of her own spark so that she may find it for herself and explore it and sometimes I feel like I have to be that friend to myself but the spark never really goes away yeah I'm curious about about sort of on this thread of of hard hard things right and how you cope with them and I I I it's a bit of a digression from from what I intended to ask you but I remember when I saw you on stage in 2017 um and even now there is an sort of an optimism about the way you present yourself there's a a a a kindness a humility a sort of this positive energy and I know that all of us you know when we're we're doing a podcast we're talking to the public and we all we all present the best version of ourselves we have to but I really felt that that was who you are and I and not to say that we don't we should shouldn't have other sides to ourselves we should but I know that you didn't have a super easy childhood you didn't grow up with your dad he wasn't around for example and and yet there's this kind of brightness or sunniness like even this thing that you said about opening up the blinds and looking out and like okay it's cloudy today like I I don't always do that I open the blinds and I'm like ah it's cloudy today and I I wonder if you have to fight to be optimistic and positive or does it is it something that's easy for you that's a really beautiful question um I I definitely have those days where I open up the blinds and it's like are you kidding me it's cloudy again I'm just going to stay in bed you know I I don't bound about the house like a mad chicken feeling glad all the time um I I think that I think you can one thing I do believe is that you you do create the world and how can I how can I put this everything is true you could say you everything you ever believe you will find evidence for being true um if you if you decide for example that the world's going to end and everything is kind of doomed and you know uh you know people yeah people people aren't very nice and actually who am I to judge anyway and I don't know who I am and maybe nothing I've done is worth it you know all these kinds of things if you if you give your attention to to those thoughts they they become true true and I know this just from experience I know it because when I go down those little trades it's not fun and it's extremely pervasive um and I think you know one thing about being a person who creates things in the world I think is that to do my job well I have to be sensitive to the world and I and I have to have an antenna which is attuned to the world and that makes me even more vulnerable in some ways to some of those feelings than than than others um I I would also say you know if you say yeah if if I if I say you know everybody is trying everybody is loving in their way um or everybody or you know there's like there's there's always there's always something to live for or um yeah it's like there's a there's a version of there's a version of of reality that you get you're in charge of it you get to decide what it is but the thing that I I forget sometimes is that I am I am in charge of it um because sometimes you forget that you get to decide like there aren't that many things in life you really get to decide I think there are two things you really get to decide one is how you spend your time and the other is where you put your attention and that literally defines your entire life like those two things Define everything for you um so you can open the blinds and look at the Cloudy sky and see two completely different Skies based on what you decide to be true and what you decide to matter um and I think sometimes it does take a little bit of practice you know and and you can't just expect yourself to show up and be the greatest version of yourself every your day I think that one of the interesting things about being the an artist is that if I if I made cheery music all the time that was like affable and great and that was the only thing I was tapping into then I wouldn't be doing my best work necessarily um I think that you know the job of an artist is to dig into all the different looks and CRS of what makes them tick and be honest about how it all feels and some of that is a bit dark and weird and and um if you do it right then people in the world who experience those things too will feel like they're not alone um but you know yeah you mentioned my my father and and growing up I think was interesting for me because I had two extremely different parents from each other you know my mother is extremely open giving kind of phosphoric bright Guiding Light person and my father's you know more more complicated more fearful um also more kind of lurgical in certain ways and and you know in a sense had more of a sort of disciplinarian approach and so I I think part of it for me which I'm grateful for when I observed myself looking back is that I was able to kind of reverse engineer a sense of kind it's almost like like a determination um to to combine the worlds that I saw and it it does like when you when there's when there's one parent figure who's either absent and so many people probably listening right now can relate to this in some way but you if you have an absent parent there's it's it's a wound that's hard to heal um and there is a little bit of a fire I think in my bed as a creative person it's like I'm going to do it I'm going to really do it I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to create with the world no matter what the world throws at me I'm going to I'm going to make it work you know there's like a there's a kind of determination that I feel I owe to that way of having been brought up um either directly or indirectly I think that that's part of what makes me me and in a sense I think as being a human being on planet Earth you can't avoid discomfort you can't avoid pain and struggle um and and I think in in a sense that the moment where you say I'm going to embrace the struggles I've have had and and and incor and so incorporate them in my story rather than try and blot them out as as I would try and blot out a cloud in the sky like oh no I don't want to see the cloud I want to see the sunshine please only sunshine if if you're able to tap in and and say Okay cool so there's a there's a there's a massive storm and then there's and then there's a wind but then tomorrow it's going to be sunny and then then there'll be this and out the other if you're able to look at the world un intimidated by struggle and say I'm going to ride this wave I'm I'm a good Surfer like I I know myself I'm going to I'm going to buckle up and make and just make the best of this um that I think is that I think is me when I'm at my best and I think it's Humanity when it's when it's at its best and and the joy of that process is not that it ends up just simply giving you purpose but it actually it gives so many people around you purpose and courage and permission to feel all of what life throws at you and for all of it to be valid all of it to be important and okay and and cool in a sense to to experience and and not just to filter out the the you know only take the the good stuff if that makes sense H how did you how were you able to I mean your sort of the first few years of your public life were um a series of these really beautiful videos many of them of you harmonizing like The Flintstones theme song oh um and and they just you know a lot of these went viral had millions and millions of of views to the point where of of course you were approached by record labels to to to to start to make music and when you started to make your own music because your first album came out in 2015 in my room did you were the expectations that you felt from the let's say the the music industry were the expectations for you to be that same kind of artist like do these acapella things and like that's who you're going to be or and and was is that okay with you if that was the expectation I remember the first meetings I took with record labels uh quite fondly actually um and not not that I ended up signing with any of the record labels or was was interested in doing that necessarily but I I I enjoyed the process I I remember I met with a label 2013 so I was like really really young I think I just maybe just turned 19 kind of when everything was kicking off and I I I brought a bunch of demos to play them and it was a mixture of you know mixture of stuff it was like some acella things it was some like rock and roll stuff and it was some jazz and improvisation and folk and electronic and it was like like every genre was present in some way shape or form and I remember playing this demos to the people you know cheery faed and being like hey guys I let me play My demos and these guys just scratching their heads and being like you know we we know there's something going on here that's really special but we don't know what on Earth to do with you like what do we do um we can't Market you as Jazz we can't Market you as Folk or classical we can't Market you as Pop and and we can't really Market you as alternative because it's not like so so we just kind of they kind of shrug their shoulders like with with respect to what I was doing they kind of said look we just don't know what to do um and and in the end one of the labels end up giving me a little a little budget like I think it was like five grand or something um which was just so amazing at that time for me to to think oh man okay so I can I can upgrade my sm58 you know know I get get a couple of other things I can get a set of speakers I can do whatever and they gave me this this little budget to go and make some make some more demos and come back in a year with no strings attached and um I was really really very grateful for that time um because I didn't know what I wanted to do yet and I wanted to figure it out on my own terms the one thing I did know was I wasn't going to be I wasn't going to kind of churn out like pop songs that just wasn't interesting that wasn't interesting enough to me um and so I I I I wanted to wanted to explore with the Acappella the Acappella Harmony stuff for a while and I did I did it that time and I also wanted to kind of expand my my multi-instrumental thing to include some other instruments I wanted to start exploring at the idea of a one man show all these things were on the horizon um and I I think in in a sense the the pressure I think I I felt in the early days as things started to grow and pick up steam wasn't so much from the labels who who just didn't really they just didn't really know what to do I think it was I think it was partly from my audience but most of all I think it was from me because I think I felt this sense of like oh I really I really know that there's some there's like there's something I have in me that I need to make exist because if I don't do it it's going to like weigh on me forever like I need to if I don't create this stuff I'm going to like not be not be okay like I have to I have to create this stuff and and that itself is pressure I think I think my early a lot of my early supporters really loved the Acappella stuff and there was there's a sort of cohort then that were like when I started to go off that track they were like hey man you know we you know we we we don't we don't want you to be doing this other stuff we want you to be making Acappella harmonization videos forever you know yeah and then then I went and did the one man show and there were and and then I remember when I moved on from the one man show to have a band there were people like man you know you've just lost the plot you know you're the one man show guy don't you don't you realize like that's your that's where your value is and then I remember when I you know I made I made that first album in my room and and then there people you made it in your room literally I made it in this very In This Very Room and and I yeah I remember some people think oh this isn't like the old stuff I don't know about this and then there were some people who thought this is this is the future of what we want and then I did the next album the next and I think I think you know there's always people no matter who you are in this world I'm sure you would attested this too there are always people who don't quite feel they can identify with the direction you're taking at any one time they don't want you to over over or they they they'd rather they'd rather you were the version of of you that they liked it seems such a simple thing to say but it's like sometimes I have to I have to remind myself it's like well you know sorry I'm not the version of you that you want me to be like I'm me instead and that's actually all I can be and that's okay and I think that goes for anyone in this world um I think one thing I'm proud of 10 years on from that time period is how the the the how vast the majority is of my followers and fans who show up for whatever version of myself I want to be anyone time if anything the thing that they hold me to the most is Jacob will definitely surprise us next and if he doesn't surprise us then he's doing it wrong you know then he's not being Jacob like he needs he needs to surprise us which is a funny Paradox because I think a lot of audiences are made are built from people who don't want artist to ever change please just make this one album again and again and again and and for me I think if I made an album again I I I'd be betraying be betraying my core fans who who know me as as a kind of chameleon of of sorts um there's also immense value and and depth and learning that you can that you can gather from doing the same thing again and again but I think my life is is a funny combination of that kind of structure and that than that chaos in a sense you know you mentioned David burn earlier and if you think about like the trajectory of his career right I mean yeah doing Talking Heads punk music songs about buildings and food and fear of music and stop making sense to then a career with you know Ray Momo and all these you know Brazilian influences and and obviously African influences but the sounds that he's produced and then you know writing a Broadway musical about Amala Marcos I mean the things that he's done and the variety of work that he's done the breath is it's breathtaking right I it's gorgeous it's amazing it's a massive range and here you are you are barely 30 years old I think I think you'll turn 30 this year true and um you you know you kind of started out as this Acappella YouTuber and obviously you have changed what you do and one to change what you do and and in the last several years you've been working with a lot of different musicians um on these the series of albums that you've you put out pronounced Jesse I think Jesse is correct absolutely yeah DJ DJ s e yeah and so I wonder how you think about pushing the boundaries you know do you is it is it is it just serendipitous is it just happen you're like oh this sounds cool let me try this and then you start moving in completely different direction or do you do you try things do you actively seek out things that seem challenging to that you might not be comfortable working with or sounding like yeah I think it's definitely a combination of those two things I mean I I look at these Titans people like David burn Quincy Jones is another one um Lenard Bernstein is a great example Stravinsky is another good example Herby Hancock You could argue um sting is another just these people who kind of ly reinvented themselves um to change with the times to change with their own Fascinations to evolve alongside the relationships and friendships and collaborations that meant a lot to them that at the time different times in their life and and I've also had the privilege of hanging out with some of these people and asking them when you were 29 what were you thinking about the future how much had you planned out and and overarchingly that I think the the the resounding answer I've got from so many people that I that I respect uh is I mean Quincy Quincy says this Quincy has a saying that he says a lot which is like if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans right so this idea that you know you can you can there's this illusion that you can ordain the rest of your life oh man I know what I'm going to be doing I'm going to score a film and write a book I'm going to have a hit record and go on tour and it's going to be freaking amazing and those things may happen they may not happen if they happen they won't be by my design that's one thing I know for certain um I think that probably but between the two forces that you stated one being the sort of serendipity and one being the more just kind of building efforts I would say that it's probably for me personally I think that it's more the Serendipity than anything else uh but my job then in the Serendipity rather than just Burying my head in the sand and waiting for something to happen is to make myself available to to the universe you know sounds a bit Cosmic but it's kind of like I need to make sure there's space in my life time in my life energy to spare the right kinds of friendships the right kind of um relationships and collaborative components and team members and all these kinds of things in my life so that I can show up and be spontaneous every day with in in good faith and know that I'll be led uh in in in the right direction and and fundamentally you know if I look back at the last 10 years it's it's such a mixture because you know some things a lot of things come out fall out fall out of the sky into your lap you think how in the world did that end up being my life what you know and then there are other things that you that you really consciously do think about and plan so you know this this album series that I've been working on Jesse volume 1 2 3 and now volume for was was in some regards very consciously designed and in others totally chaotic you know I wanted to this was after in my room was finished I finished the one man show tour and I was thinking I want to man I not only do I want to collaborate but I need to collaborate with some musicians alone you were playing all the instruments on stage I yeah and whilst that was a joy I was like I'm I'm not going to evolve I'm not going to evolve as a person and a musician enough uh in the ways that I want to unless I find a way of of collaborating with the musicians so I thought well I'm not just going to collaborate with a few people I want to collaborate with everybody in the world you know it's a very s of Jacobian construct there but I remember making a list of yeah 50 60 musicians that I loved and who were alive um and broadly designing the the idea for the album where volume one was going to be this kind of orchestral album volume two was more of a folk based album volume three was more of a kind of R&B and electronic sounds based album and vol four was question mark question mark question mark I I'll figure out when I get there and and then this list of collaborators and and some demos and the the thing that I find extraordinary is how many of those people are on the album um and you know you think well every every one of those collaborations in a sense was serendipitous in some way you know they dm'd me out of the blue or I ended up backstage with them at a show or we bumped into each other on the street or whatever happened to be or all the things but but simultaneously to it being sended like also kind of manifested it by by imagining the feeling of having it before I I had it it was like oh what would it feel like if I had like yeah Stormy on my album that would be crazy that would be insane or how would it feel to have John Mayor or how would it feel to have take six or JoJo or any of these people um and you some of these people are really well known and some of these people are virtually unknown um to the to the wider you know music world but I I loved them all equally and I I sought that feeling and um I think yeah I think I I I Marvel now looking back at the whole process the The Staggering list of people that it's just like wow you know and I I could never have planned it but I also did kind of plan it's it's it's a fun funny balance how do you write for like let's just use an example Tain who who was on on your last record like are you like you're writing and arranging all of this music I mean not just not just performing on them but you are arranging this stuff and also producing it as well I am yeah so I think I that was that that was the bit I knew I really was the most kind of excited and and slightly terrified of was you know I I'm I'm producing this these four albums by myself so it's it's literally just me in this exact chair looking at this exact screen clicking and dragging till the cows come home and and there's no one else to be like hey you know you could do that like this it's just me so you know I I I knew it would be interesting and it it's been s such a challenge in so many ways but tain's a great example you know T's world I have delighted in for many years as we all have you know he's brilliant he's got such a cracken sense of humor he doesn't take himself too seriously but he's also like really am I don't know if you've seen his NPR tinyest concert but he's a really really great singer so his ears are wide open um he followed me on Instagram at one point and I was kind of like man Tain just follow me this is crazy I have a song right now with Jesse Reyes and I and I need a hook like a kind of like anthemic hook and like if there was one guy in the world I would think to could provide this maybe it's te honestly it's tein like let's just ask him so I I I messaged him like hey T man like what's up you know he was like oh Jacob and I'm I'm I'm such a fan whatever and I was just so blown away and so we facetimed and I was like man I've got this this tune called count the people and you know there's this drum line breakout where it's [Music] like and I want a hook that's like oh yeah oh yeah something something something something and I was like what do you think T and he was like man I'm free this evening just like leave it with me so I left it with him I left it with t for the night and you know at about 5:00 a.m. that night I got a FaceTime back and it was Tay in a studio bopping around like blasting this and he he'd written this hook along the lines that I'd like the criteria that i' said and he just crushed it it was so amazing and um you know that that whole record Jesse volume 3 was so interesting because so much of it was done in lockdown it was not done in person so you know I remember mailing a microphone to um Kiana Le and mailing a microphone to Mahalia and like talking through on FaceTime I remember with Kiana saying okay so so you plug you plug the audio interface in with this USBC cable on this side and then You' like have to install this driver and then I was like remote you know remote desktop to control her screen and stuff and and Engineering her session from home and so that whole process of collaboration like virtual collaboration is is insanely interesting to me and it was a very a very interesting time and and different from all the inperson sessions you know for example writing music for an orchestra which I've done for Jesse volume 1 and now also Jesse volume 4 and and that's literally me with the manuscript paper like writing out every note for every instrument you know Piccolo bassoon French horn all this stuff and I haven't got training really I don't have I haven't been trained to orchestrate this stuff I just love orchestral music and and have the have the nerve to try to reverse engineer it and and and you know being in the in the room with an orchestra and and and kind of discerning what you like and what you don't like was amazing one fun thing about Jesse volume 4 is that my mom actually conducted the orchestra on the record which I just loved that process cuz we got to be like co-conspirators in and around that side of the collaboration which is very cool but you know so different from Tay which is which is so different from Chris Martin which is so different from anybody else that everyone is his own island of kind of Wonder and learning and and so Jesse volume 4 um this record is about you described this that it's being about the human voice and not just a few voices I mean all your records are about the human voice but like Mass scales human voice like yeah tens of thousands of people can you explain what what that is how you do that yeah so one of the things that I loved most about the most recent World Tour I did which is 2022 to 2023 um we played about 150 shows all across the world um one of the things I delighted the most was something that evolved over time to be what I now think of as the audience choir the idea of the audience choir and um it's you know it's it was it began as a as an experiment it's it's still an experiment there's nothing particularly defined about it um but the idea is you know audiences always I think audiences always know more than you think they they know um and all they normally need is just permission so I I like to give my my audiences a ton of permission just to get involved cool response you know sing it back sing it you know harmonize whatever do whatever you want and and people tend to muck in and do things and there's something that happened once in I think it's actually it's where you are it's in San Francisco there's a venue called August Hall I don't know if you know that venue but um I played that venue in 2019 so a while ago now and uh and at the very end of the show I was playing an encore and and the final I was I think I was playing Blackbird by The Beatles I think that was I always loved playing that tune live and and I I got to the end of the song and the final cot of the song I was in the key of f so the final C of the song was F major and I played F major and the crowd went and they they sang they sang the F major and I thought this is beautiful you know like what an amazing what an amazing sound and I I remember they like they sang it and I stopped playing and they and they kept singing it so I stood up from the piano and I walked to the front of the stage and I just kind of looked at them and they were going oh you know and and then I thought okay well if if I give if I give you this note this note this note then I I I split the room into three parts basically and I started to point up and down to different parts of the audience and to my absolute amazement they all moved the note up and down as as though I told them what no to sing but I didn't tell them they just knew they knew inherently and that moment will for me go down in history as a kind of a bit of a life-changing moment for me cuz I I recognized so much at that moment um I recognized that me at my greatest is bigger than me that's one thing I realized um I also realized that all people normally need is just a chance you know give give them a chance and they will provide something of value um and also that I was on the edge of a world of discovery that felt a little bit untapped which is really exciting and I I've seen people do cor response stuff with audience there's that amazing Freddy Mercury video from 1985 live live a where he does that legendary Coral response with 100,000 people and um I also used to like pour over videos of Bobby mcfarren in the'80s doing his one man show and all the spontaneous inventions all of that stuff which I just love so much and but I'd never seen someone play an audience polyphonically before which is to say multiple notes moving in different directions at one time so from that moment to kind of the present moment now I've I've been expanding on that language uh and you know the the the the kind of musical territory I've found myself in has blown my mind um and it's just the most extraordinary feeling to go all over the world and to conduct these audience choirs and I'm improvising every night you know I don't have a a particular route through the chords that I know I always want to do I'm constantly trying new things up and down we could go here we could go here trying to change key and all this stuff without saying a word um I think the biggest challenge last year was glastenbury I played at glastenbury for the first time 30,000 people came and um I thought well I know I I only have an hour set and if I go one minute over they're going to cut the feed to TV but I wanted to try 2 minutes of audience choir so I did it and it worked at glenury and that that's Outdoors that's Outdoors so there's no reverberation um that is not musicians it's just a bunch of plebs you know who who are there like just amazing well-meaning audience members but who aren't necessarily musically inclined and it was just an amazing experience to be enlivened by that so what I started to do to got a long story short was to record the audiences at every one of my shows and out of all those recordings hundreds and hundreds of recordings i i amassed a choir a 150,000 Voice Choir wow which sings on Jesse volume 4 throughout the album on different songs so anytime you hear a choir singing It's probably an audience of 5,000 you know um and the first song on the album which is called 100,000 voices literally has 100,000 voices on it um and I can't describe the sound of it it's it's like a it's like a a wall of humanity it's like this enormous tidal wave of like just like Joy really enthusiasm and joy and and and so as I as I described I've been waiting for the Jessie volum 4 kind of um kind of like like apple to fall it was like what's this album what's this album really about you know I've explored all these genres 1 two 3 what's this album All About and I realized with the audience choirs this album is about the human voice and it's about the power of everybody in the world having a voice using a voice the courage to express with a voice and and the communal power of the voice as well the power of voices on mass and then I thought back to my earliest Beginnings as a musician sitting in this room with my little ESS 58 layering my own voice on top of itself time and time again kind of seeking exactly the same thing which is harmony with between voices the idea that you know a person can be more of themselves um the idea that somewhere out there Beyond The Four Walls of this room are is a whole world of people who who are seeking connection who want to give connection and and and somehow and again this is you could say I planned it but in truth I think I just walked the path and saw what happened but I've ended up right where I started in my career which is which is wide open to what music can offer me as a human and deeply in love with the potential of the human voice um It's amazing And and as as Quincy Jones once told you you can't plan for what's going to come next you just have no idea exactly exactly and I still have no idea I still don't know what's going to come next I you know who knows where I'll be in a year's time or two years time or 5 years time or whatever but um yeah I think if there's something I've learned now and not just within the world of music but just in the in the world full stop it's like you you you just give without holding back you know if you if if you if there's something you've got to give you just give it and it's only in giving it that you can that you can get back and so I think I've just I've I've become accustomed to that joy and that's like like that that's the one rule I want to live by I I don't there aren't really any other rules I want to live by but I do want to keep giving and I want to keep learning um that just kind of feels like the thing and you you look at someone like Quincy and you think that man is still learning you know he's still open to the world and that's a that's such a gift I want to be as cool as Quincy when I'm 90 and still be figuring out stuff you know yeah Jacob ker thank you so much thank you thank you for having me for sure hey thanks so much for watching my conversation with Jacob klier his new record is called Jesse volume 4 we'll include some links to some of his best music videos at our show notes you can find those at the great creators.com colier there you can also find tons of interviews to people like Tom Hanks and Ellie ging and Jeff Tweety and bork and so many other amazing people you can also find this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts just search for the great creators and please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode and also if you get a chance please hit subscribe so you never miss a new episode of our video version of the show thanks again for watching I'm Guyz you've been watching the great creators and we'll be back here next week with another conversation