If you paid attention to the Grammy’s this year, you might have noticed an unusual nominee in the Album of the Year category. Jacob Collier, a musician from the UK, is basically unknown in the world of mainstream music. For me, he’s my favorite artist and I was overjoyed to see him nominated. I saw a lot of people talking about how this random guy got nominated, so I wanted to write this blog explaining who he is and why he got nominated.
Collier got nominated 3 categories this year– Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals, Best R&B Performance, and Album of the Year, all for his album Djesse vol. 3. Before the 2021 Grammy’s, he was nominated for 4 other awards, all of which he won. This year, he won Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals for “He Won’t Hold You,” and unfortunately lost in the other categories.
To those unfamiliar with his music, it came as a shock that he was nominated in one of the biggest categories, competing with Beyonce and Taylor Swift. However, his album is highly regarded in the world of critics. Collier is a musical prodigy, known for his experiments in chords and rhythms, which he included throughout his album. Technically, his music was the most complicated in the category.
In one of the producing sessions of a track on the album, he can have between 300-600 tracks of different sounds and rhythms. Most typically, a track has at most 25. In addition to this, Jacob plays most of the instruments on the album, as well as mixing and mastering himself (with slight help from another person). However, the statistics of a track don’t make it impressive, the content of the music does.
A typical production view of a singular track
Collier uses such impressive music theory in his songs, that if I attempted to explain how everything works, I would get it wrong. However, I can describe it in simple terms. He has written songs in keys that don’t typically exist, like in the key G half sharp. G half sharp is the note in between G and G sharp, a note you would not be able to find on a normally tuned piano. He also uses poly rhythms (layering two different rhythm patterns on top of each other) and chords so complicated they would not be used in a typical pop song. There’s more theory to what he does, but it goes above my head. Therefore, although these things are impressive it’s the music that matters.
At the end of the day, Collier just makes good music. It’s impossible to put him in a specific genre, since his album spans a few, but I would say he can fit in R&B and hyperpop. He also has collaborations with larger artists, like Ty Dolla Sign and Daniel Caesar. For as complicated as his music is, he is able to make his music enjoyable without being overwhelming. For as complicated as his songs are balanced with how good they are, I think it’s easy to see why he was nominated for album of the year. I strongly suggest you check his music out, and see if you agree with the nomination.
Hey Maeve!
Jacob Collier, as a musician, has always been an awe inspiring artist for me, and it came as almost no surprise that he was nominated (again) to the Grammy’s. To the specific track you have pictured I am not sure, but I remember watching live his Logic (the program he used to combine these tracks) breakdown of Moon River, one of the songs he won a Grammy for in 2017. I remember being in awe not necessarily at the volume of tracks, but at the speed and comprehension and joy of which he had for each moment of it, and as he demonstrated his thought process for each new chord progression. He really is fearless in trying and experimenting with new sounds, like the G half sharp you mentioned. “Poly” is really a great way to describe Collier: poly rhythm, poly tonic, poly timbre, poly syncope. So much of everything that makes his pieces seem as if they would fall apart but miraculously, and by design, they don’t. Collier really is a musician among musicians.
Hi Maeve,
Like you mentioned previously, I had no idea who Jacob Collier was until reading your blog post. I didn’t even know that he was nominated for Grammys in the same lane as big artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift. I think it’s really cool how much care he puts into his arrangements, producing more than 10x tracks than the typical artist and playing most of the instruments himself. After reading this post and learning about how highly regarded of a musician he is, I’ll definitely check out his music over break.