We need to talk about Jacob Collier.

Jacob Collier gets a bad rap. Whether it’s his plummy accent or his obsessive, almost manic enthusiasm for musical concepts that even I, as a professional musician, sometimes need a moment to wrap my head around, he tends to polarise opinion. Much like Marmite, you either love him or hate him.

Perhaps part of the reason so many find him objectionable is simply that they don’t understand him. He is painfully talented, effortlessly picking up new instruments and mastering them with infuriating ease. His grasp of musical ideas—microtones, hexachords, and the like—is so far beyond that of the casual listener that he can be difficult to connect with. If you’ve ever seen Jacob play, you’ll know how instinctively he seems to command whatever instrument is at hand.
Or maybe you just don’t like the way he dresses.

I don’t like Jacob Collier.

Lately, and I suppose rather inevitably, he’s joined the ranks of musicians-turned-philosophers, offering thoughts on self-care, procrastination, and mental health. Given his achievements, he may well be qualified to do so, but there’s something faintly ridiculous about taking life advice from someone who almost exclusively wears pyjamas.

But that’s not why I don’t like him.

As a musician and composer, I have always ‘spoken’ through music. I have always strived—sometimes struggled—to tell a story or convey emotion through sound. And that can get messy, especially if you’re not entirely sure what it is you’re searching for. For me, music is an ever-changing problem to be solved—like the Bach Chorales I wrote about in my previous post. The tension created by the ‘problem’ and the resolution found in the ‘solution’ is what makes music exciting, passionate, and relatable.

Jacob’s music doesn’t do this. It’s too clean, too clever, too perfect. I don’t hear struggle. I don’t hear turmoil or passion. I don’t hear an artist wrestling with something beyond themselves. I just hear precision. I don’t know who he is, beyond the words he sings.

Of course, this is all entirely subjective. Maybe I just don’t understand him. Maybe he’s so far ahead of me as a musician that I simply can’t grasp what he’s doing—like a great mathematician trying to teach my three-year-old how to add numbers.

And he’s not alone.

Joshua Redman is another example—arguably one of the most talented saxophonists we’ve ever heard—but it all comes so easily to him. He tosses off these brilliant ideas, these little moments of technical mastery, as if they’re nothing. And because they’re so effortless, they feel empty.

I’m not sure where I first heard it, but one of my favourite quotes is: “Technique is the liberation of the imagination.” Once you’ve mastered your craft, you should be able to set technique aside and simply speak. But the music that moves me—the music that stops me in my tracks—comes from artists whose struggle is audible. They don’t always know where they’re going, what the destination is, or even what path they’re on. But they invite us along for the ride, laying themselves bare in the process.

Michael Brecker. Slipknot. Samuel Barber. Hendrix. All masters in their own right. But their music is filled with imperfections, struggle, turmoil, longing, joy, pain. Journeys.

No, you don’t always need this to enjoy music. And perhaps that’s where Jacob Collier comes in. But for me, it’s those imperfections, that shared experience of struggle, that creates a connection between artist and audience. It’s what makes the music human.

Journeys—pyjamas optional.