What’s up, everybody? My name is Jacob Collier, and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is seven time Grammy award winning multi instrumentalist who sold out theaters and arenas across the globe while working with some of the world’s biggest artists. He and I also happen to have the same amount of violin playing experience. Jacob Collier, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. When you had your two years of violin playing, did you also hover the bow above the strings during the recitals because you were so bad and you didn’t want to drag down all the other hard working boys and girls? I, I’m pretty sure the first time I tried to play the violin, I tried to play with the wood of the bow, you know, which actually is an interesting sound, turns out, but not the way that people usually do it. I just could only make the screech of an owl come out of it. Uh, yeah. The screech of an owl is underrated, you could say, but it’s definitely the first stop for every violin player on Earth, is to go, meh! And then it’s just like, from there, you keep progressing. Have you thought about your last meal before? I’ve never thought about my last meal before. This is a slight tangent but to me, one of the essences of being creative is the collision of unlikely things together. Mm-hmm. Right you take this thing and this thing. They never usually collide but today they’re gonna collide. Did you find any similarities in like arranging this last meal as you would arrange a musical piece? 100%. Yeah, 100 percent. When it comes to food I think there’s there’s this very, very relatable sense that everybody experiences, as you said, everyone in the world eats. It’s like, everyone knows the feeling of flavor. Everyone understands that sense. My job as a person, not usually with food, but my job as a person is to find those kind of satisfying, like, collisions. Well, let me pitch something to you then. You said, after your latest album, Jessie Vol. 4 came out, you can finally start your career. You didn’t say your career in what. I train you to be a chef, you train me to be the world’s greatest violinist. Oh, wow. Oh gosh. I think we can make this happen. Well, okay. I mean, I’m down with that. Uh, how often do you think about death? I think I’ve thought more about it in the last few years than I used to when I was a child. Though I suppose when you’re a child you always think about the world’s biggest problems as though they’re just part of your day. But yeah, it’s something I’m not often asked about. And it’s gonna be fun and a privilege to get to think about that today with you. And it always goes down a little bit easier with some Almdudler. That’s what I’ve always said. Had you ever heard of Almdudler before today? No, I did some research on it and I cannot wait to, It’s Austria’s most famous and popular herbal lemonade since 1957. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Not a sponsor yet. No, no, not yet, but, but here’s hoping. You ready to get to the first course? I’m so ready. Jacob, for the first course of your final meal on this earth, we have the Yellowtail Crudo with ponzu sauce, jalapeno, and cilantro from Nobu in Malibu. We also have the Tuna Toro Tartare, a little bit of caviar on top, and some soy around it. And then in a stark departure. We have pigs in a blanket. Now this is pastry from a can where it’s meant to be wrapped around pre made sausages that came vacuum sealed of course and then to wash it all down some Grand Marnier, the finest French cognac started in 1822. Tell me about this incredible panoply of foods. Wow okay well so the honest truth is I did not think too much about the combination other than that I just love all three things. I will say you, the way this works to break the fourth wall here is you send us just a brick of text of all your favorite foods that and then we try and sort of arrange it and remix it as we see fit. Yeah, right. So this to us was sort of like a bit of an appetizer selection. Exactly. I can see how you got here and it is very exciting to me. So pigs in blankets, I always think about christmas day at home because that’s where pigs in blankets originate for me and it’s it’s one of the one of the main things at Christmas that I take charge of myself, like i’ll I’ll, I’ll take a sausage and I’ll wrap it in bacon and you put it in the oven and it’s like my thing. Yeah, yeah. Which is always really exciting. Um, so the last time I had Pigs in a Blanket was, yeah, literally Christmas Day 2014. Is that the depths of your cooking experience? I, I have very little cooking experience, so that is pretty much as deep as I’ll go. We have a long road ahead with my violin and your cookin Jacob. It’s, it’s gonna be a journey, but I’m, I’m strapped in for it. Uh, please, dig in. Enjoy. Thank you. Oh, amazing. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna start here because this is just, this is where it’s at. so much everybody who made this food. Cheers. Last meal ever. Wow. I know. Did it have you nervous at all? To die or to eat? More to die, but some people are nervous about eating on camera. Dying, I mean, it’s bound to happen. Yeah, I want to ask really quickly about the Grand Marnier because in a 2022 BBC documentary in the room where it happens, there’s a shot where there’s a bottle of Grand Marnier next to your computer. Yeah. And the next shot it’s mysteriously gone. Is there a story there or am I reading way too much into it? Um, yeah, yeah, you’re, you’re reading way too, way too much. Fantastic. You just enjoy Grand Marnier. I love Grand Marnier. That bottle was a gift from a friend. It’s like one of the miniature bottles. I very rarely drink alcohol in the studio. I mean, I don’t drink much alcohol anyway. If I drink alcohol, it’s because I just love the taste so much that I just, I must drink it. I have to ask about that because alcohol is a poison, I’m fascinated with the way that, like, biology, creativity, subjectivity of taste interact with food. Alcohol is literally a poison. Your body should want to reject it. And I think if you took somebody in a vacuum without all the cultural meaning, they would taste alcohol and just go, whereas they would drink maybe a Capri Sun or grape juice and say, that tastes good. What is it about alcohol that you actually enjoy? Potentially contrary to most people in my field. I don’t, I wouldn’t say I drink alcohol to loosen up my tongue or access my creative flow. I’ve always found since I was very small, there’s a way of getting to the state that I would call like alpha state Which is a state where there’s kind of no obstructions and like absolutely– Similar to alpha brainwaves? I first encountered the term as a state that all people go into right before they fall asleep and right before they, well, right after they’ve woken up, incidentally it’s a state that all kids are in up to the age of five like constantly and so it’s a state where like you’re sponging the world like effortlessly and, and forging connections you would never usually forge and sometimes you can get into a state of mind that is like that just like naturally and for like, for anyone who knows that state, like, as a creative person, as a, as a human, and I think we all do it in our own ways, but there is nothing you could possibly do to improve that state. All you could do is like, mullify it or dull it with something like alcohol. Yeah. That said, like, you could, you could have so much fun going out and having a drink with a friend. Mm. Alcohol has its, has its, its, its way of freeing people up. Yeah. But for me, I just love the taste, like, this, I love the taste of Grappone. I’m quite a sweet tooth, so like, a sweet alcoholic drink can be just the right thing that you need to have a nice day, you know? Yeah, and there’s that little combination of bitterness. It seems like your native language is music. Like, English is just something you happen to conversationally pick up. But it seems like the way you sort of transliterate the world is in a very musical way. How does that affect sensory creative experiences like food? Like, when you taste something, are you hearing the music in it? So I was having this conversation with a friend the other day. He asked me the question of, you know, are you a synesthesia? Do you experience the sort of multimodality of senses and inputs and things? And my, my traditional answer to that has always been no, because I think I’ve always believed up until recently that, you know, the only way of having that experience is to, is to the thing that people talk about with color. You see color, oh, I see green. And I, I hear D or I, whatever. Um, I’ve never really experienced it like that before. But what I will say is, I think that the way my brain is coded, sort of, linguistically. For example, if you told me to add salt to my chord, I would know how to do that. Yeah. For me, anyway. Like, salt is a particular experience. It’s like a spiky, you know what I mean? And I can use vocabulary or sonic capacity to explain that. It’s not as simple as, oh, basal leaf equals F sharp minor. Sure, sure. Do me a favor, taste the Toro Tartare. Okay, Toro Tartare. Tell me what it sounds like. I’ll tell you what it sounds like. Okay, great. I have no idea if chopsticks is the right I think it’s not the right way. I’m going tiny spoon. I’m kind of like. You got it. I’ll spot you. Somehow I’m. There you go. Okay. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Oh, that is amazing. Are you kidding me? Oh, wow. Harry Potter theme song. That’s what you’re hearing? I love that. So, I can maybe suggest why the Harry Potter theme song is what you’re hearing. Okay. A lot of the time with Magic, we have this scale called the whole tone scale, which is like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo like this kind of like there’s a fairy you know thing, and so there’s elements of that, that appear in, in the, in, in that theme tune, but it’s still very grounded, it’s like it’s very chromatic and surprising, but it’s very grounded, so I would say there’s something about this to me, which is like very familiar and very shareable, but also there’s something that is like surprising and bright like the sharpness of the flavor. Um, so that actually makes a weird amount of sense to me I think you and I are both musical geniuses is what we’re finding out. Are you one of those people that can just sort of sit in a room and have a dialogue with yourself. I mean, very auto didactically in a way that almost makes you feel like you don’t need contact with other people. Like you can sort of just self entertain and play the movies, play the music, cook the dish in your own head. Would that like somewhat accurately describe your experience? I would say it, it, um, definitively defines more my experience when I was smaller. I had a very strong feeling as a child, like at school, for example, where I would close my eyes and imagine I could just make my own world instead. It’s like, like make, make my own environment or modulate the world. So it’d be like, okay, I’ve got like a camera, lighting fixture. I’ve got food and now I’m going to let it all play with each other. It’s crazy. It really sought that feeling of, I’m going to take the world as it is and I’m going to transform it. Like I’m going to alchemize it, twist it up into something that feels new or interesting and weird. You don’t need other people to do that. That’s your process. However, I think in the last few years, even just as a musician, as a human, I’ve fallen in love with, in new ways, with other people and how to play in such a way through them. Not at them, but through them and using their mind too. And that this album I made recently, Jesse Volume 4, I made four albums. Yeah. The art of twisting the world and then using other people’s imaginations and extending your own limbs through, through there is that there’s always like really excited me, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, it’s one speaking of extremes. We have the pigs in a blanket over here as you’re eating caviar. We’ll get to that. But you also had an extreme in your first album ever, In My Room, which was you alone in your room. As you said, you’re not creating in a vacuum, but you are literally creating in a room, Jesse volume four, you’ve collaborated with more than 100,000 voices on it. Is there something that really gets your goat when it comes to those two extremes? Like, you’ve gone from complete isolation to absolute hyper collaboratization. Yeah. One quick aside is, an interesting thing is, when you say, Get your goat. Yeah. You mean it as something that’s cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that what get your goat means? Well, I, but I like the way you use it because goats are rad. Right. Yeah. But in the UK, if something gets you going, it’s like something that like gets on your nerves. I think you’re more right than I am and I think I messed it up. Well, I was wondering if there was a, if there was a discrepancy between like US and UK and I was kind of delighted by that. No, I should have said butter your biscuit. Oh, okay. Yeah, fair enough. And biscuit means very different things to both of us. Butter your biscuit, that’s, we would never say that in the UK. Exactly. That’s like a full fat US. Tell your friends about that one. But so the question you were asking question about collaboration like ultra collaboration. Um, I’ve always been deeply obsessed with the human voice. We all have one every voice is different, but I think my idea of a voice, what a voice is has changed over the years, I think I used to think my voice lived here. This is my voice. I’m gonna go up, and now I think my voice is in my choices like the, the, the, my opinions, the, the world as I see it. Have you seen Happy Feet? I love Happy Feet. The thesis of Happy Feet? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit actually. Yeah, because he like, was it Mumble? Mumble, Mumble is finding his voice. I, I, his voice isn’t through physical projection. It’s through a little happy feet. It, it is through the tippity tap. Chopsticks, I’m gonna eat this with chopsticks. I have to do it. I have to join you. Mm-hmm. Well, coach, you gotta, this is awesome. Cheers. Hey, before we get to the next course, we all got a drink and we’re all gonna die, so you might as well do it out of our new Last Meal’s bar set. Pick your poison in our high ball of rocks glasses, plus a cocktail shaker. It’s 5 o’clock, right? 4:58? Whatever. Get yours now at mythical.com Jacob, for the second course of your final meal on this earth, we have the Fiat 500 car shaped pasta. Actually, we had to get a competing brand. This is simply, I’m going to call it, uh, automobile yachty. This is a car shade pasta from America. It’s like the Ford focus of pasta. Yeah. Yeah. With the bolognese on top, a little Parmesan cheese on the side and then the Almdudler, Austria’s favorite herbal lemonade. Yes. So I walked into a hotel in Vienna, 2023. I was playing a show there in July and they had this beautiful bottle. In fact, it was, it was kind of this color. It was like Grand Marnier color, but um, yeah, I was I’m thirsty. I’m tired. It’s 11 p.m I’m just and I never tasted anything as good as this I think in my life until maybe that moment at least that’s how it felt and so I ordered a crate to London of 24 glass bottles of of Almdudler and I’ve never looked back since. Some people say that the best sauce is low expectations And you have raised my expectations so high and I am very prepared for them to be met by Almdudler. Cheers, fantastic. Jacob. Jacob Collier. Jacob. That is a treat. What do you think? No, I actually think it’s incredible. It is a lot, everything in America is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, right? Which actually really changes the mouthfeel and the way that acid travels across the palate. And so this is actually like it’s incredibly bright. I don’t think that I could improve on this. Yeah I mean, I would agree. Yeah, man, and if you’re saying that then that’s really something. The alpine lemons, they’re really. It’s light, isn’t it? This is, this is just, it’s just, just right for the for the bollock. Tell me about the car shaped pasta. Oh, wow. Okay so, actually, the car shaped pasta is a newer fascination for me. The Bolognese is like an age old childhood favorite from Mama Collier. Yeah. Do you refer to it as spag bol? Is that a, uh? Yeah, well, my mom would say bolog. Just bolog. Straight, but that’s probably just her. But yeah, the idea of spag bol is familiar to me. But car shaped pasta is something I found in the last six months. There’s a, like, an Italian pasta brand in the UK called Pasta Evangelists. And they offer Fiat 500 shaped pasta, and I love a good Fiat 500, especially the electric one, but I’m not like a sponsor I just love like the car. Yeah, and so when I saw it, I was like, that’s that’s my that’s, that’s me, that’s my car and I ordered it through Pastry Packages and I thought this is something people should do more. You know, a pasta could be in any shape in the world Why not make it interesting? I’m really fascinated by this. Please take it take a bite dig in. I will. I’m excited I’m going spoon on this. It’s steamy. It’s beautiful. So car shaped pasta, this is explicitly marketed for children. However, there’s a similar pasta called radiatori, or radiator shaped pasta, that is considered quite fancy. It made me think about these really false binaries that we have. What is childish? A whole car is childish, but just part of a car in pasta is for adults? You’ve said that there are no right notes, there are no wrong notes. Why do you think people get stuck into this level of dichotomous thinking? Well, to speak to one part of what you just said, which is really close to my heart, I think a lot about children and their imaginations. One of my least favorite things or behaviors in this world, it’s when an adult will approach a child and kind of like exaggerate themselves to try and be understood. Like, hey little, hey little fella, how you doing? It’s like the child is looking at the child, the child knows more. Yeah, right. But it’s way more appropriate for adults than children, right? Children already know that you’re there. It’s like, thank you. Okay, great. And there’s this like intensely patronizing children’s output of media that I’m really kind of sickened by. Um, of like, You know, it’s just like. Calm down the world is extremely stimulating enough. Yeah, a lot of the time when something described as childish, it’s like childish has negative connotations childlike often has good connotations, but I think often it’s a word we used to describe something that’s big and a big and a part of the world, that’s complex. That’s, that’s brought down to be become something simple, which is like my whole thing, it’s like my whole line of work is to say “Look at this big world”, and here is a way of you, um, understanding this world, which is actually very simple because it’s for everybody. When someone says, oh, that’s really, that’s kind of, you know, childlike of you, or that’s childish of you to think like that. I pay attention because it’s usually a sign I’m thinking in a helpful direction, or a good direction, because it’s, it’s actually kind of simplifying the world and not making it needlessly complex as we adults just so like to do we like to project all our layers onto the world, you know, yeah I think I’ve heard you use the phrase the creative adult is the child who, who lived on who survived or the child who survived, what do you think society gets as a whole if we allow more people to have that creativity survive? Because as you said kids are digesting this insane neon bright hyperactive content and then they’re sitting in a school and people are wondering why they are misbehaving or can’t sit still and just memorize the damn times tables, what do you think we get as a larger society if we allow that creativity to flourish? One of the biggest things I’d say off the top of my head is you get a whole group of people who are comfortable with not knowing what’s gonna happen next. Mm-hmm. And children have a beautiful relationship with the unknown and chaos because their attitude is to incorporate it, like, oh, what’s that? You know, they eat it, or they put their, you know, tongue on it, or they touch it, break it. Grown ups try to sort of compartmentalize or understand things often by drawing lines around things, which are extremely unhelpful and often completely made up. In adulthood now, I think in education for sure, this idea of play is almost this thing that we talk down to. Oh, it’s just playing, you know. But what if the model was flipped and play is the whole point of life? Maybe that’s why we’re here at all, is to come on. Goof about, play with our materials, collide unusual stuff, make some relationships and connections, and then boom, we’re done. It’s really interesting the way that you started your career on YouTube, where I think it was a lot more playful place more than a decade ago. Yeah, it really was. And now you see, I mean, the, I guess, pressures of commerce, I don’t know what, how else to describe it, really infect everything. I mean, frankly, I didn’t start working in the YouTube business, which is weird that I even called it that, until it was like a fully fledged, full time job where I can get healthcare. I was a journalist writing for magazines. Do you think that, like, pressure for people to earn money, the world is changing, things are getting more expensive, do you think that is, like, a, I don’t know, reasonable way to describe this lack of play in society? Is people feeling that pressure? Do you think there’s something bigger going on there? I think that what we’re seeing right now, with, yeah, say YouTube, even 10 years ago versus now, with the, you know, the dawn of algorithms and Uh, it’s these kind of, you know, more, more rigid and competitive systems for our attention is we’re left with a sort of exaggerated and somewhat, uh, manipulated version of ourselves where we’re kind of twisted into unusual shapes, car shapes. It was a different place 10 years ago, YouTube, because it was more of like a canvas. You could say, well, I’ll put this thing up that I’ve made, and the people who find it, well, those are the people who are going to be my main messages. And I’m going to make it for those people. Whereas now, you’ve got a lot of artists, creators, people of the world making things, displaying themselves for, not people, but, you know, these algorithms which decide what is worthy of attention and what’s not. But I think you have two main currencies in your life. You have your attention and you have your time. And with those two things you can literally build any world you could possibly imagine. And if you want any evidence as to how important your attention is, look how desperate. corporations are for it, they will extend themselves wildly, spend billions, trillions of dollars just for a little, a little, a little tiny bit of your, of your, of your attention. An Almdudler could get in on this attention. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thanks. You hold an interesting record at the Grammys, which is you have the only, I believe two albums that have been nominated for album of the year without ever having charted. You’re talking about competing for people’s attention. You certainly have a lot, a lot of it. But not on a very specific level that a lot of these other massive pop stars have. However, people at the Grammys have obviously recognized that and a lot of some of the world’s best, most famous musicians. Is that a badge that you wear with honor? Oh yeah. It excites me really deeply that an album as weird as this and as like, yeah, radically inclusive as this can be kind of, um, placed alongside such other sort of luminary musicians and be called one of the, you know, one of the albums that represents this year. It’s crazy. Absolutely crazy. I’m so excited by people who make non formulaic work. Creatives and brands and all sorts. They demand a lot of you. They demand that you conform to the thing that it is, that the music is. Or they demand that you change or modulate yourself into some other structure. You know, it’s like, are you going to join the cult or not sort of thing. There’s a difference between a cult and like an inclusive movement. I will say that’s a great thing for a cult leader to say. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right. You know, this certainly isn’t a cult. This is an inclusive movement. Yeah. So, so at my concerts, one of the things I’m most proud of, more proud than any kind of streaming numbers or Grammys or anything, is just the audience at a show. You’ve got people from age 5 to age 95. In fact, there was a lady last year who turned 100 at one of my shows and we all sang a happy birthday. It was amazing. You’ve got people of all walks of life, and they all come and they dress in weird colors and, and they’re just, they’re really themselves. And I’m very proud of, of this environment that I’ve been able to curate, where people feel like that’s possible for them. I don’t want them to be more like me, I want them to be more like them. Yeah. And when I was a kid, my biggest heroes Stevie Wonder, Bobbie McFerrin, people like that. I never listened to them and thought, I want to be like Stevie Wonder. I thought, I love this so much, that when I grow up, I want to be Jacob. And that to me is like the truest inspiration I could ever think to provide for people. Just to share an anecdote, executive producer Annalise went to one of your shows and she shared a story that. After you left, after you did the encore, they were playing Earth, Wind Fire and everybody just stayed there singing and dancing. Even when the music went out, people kept singing acapella as much as they could remember. We stumbled upon more videos of that happening completely independently at other shows. So I think you’ve attracted the right kind of people. Even when you’re gone, the music stays with them. Oh, well, one thing I’d love to do at the end of every show. It’s a great thought. It’s a great thought. I’m fully sending this this is like midday. Like I don’t need the hard liquor anymore. Let’s water it down. Let’s just chill man, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s be like these two, you know. But, I always blast September Earth, Wind, and Fire at the end of every show because it’s the best song in the world, obviously, yeah, it’s become a bit of a moment where people know that it’s coming, to people who really know know that’s coming in but in venues where it’s just like a pit people always form like a conga line and they’ll move around the conga line. I did not tell them to do this, it’s just something they did by themselves, but I love it so much. It’s so special Jacob for course three we have the giant exotic fruit platter, the more peculiar the better. We have some kiwano melon here. We have yellow pitaya or dragon fruit. Pink pitaya. We have the passion fruit. The lily koi. We have the white strawberries. We have kiwi. We have star fruit. We have donut peaches. We have lemon plums. Those are a personal favorite. Uh, we have fresh guava. We have hoshigaki persimmons. This is a hachia persimmon that has been actually, uh, fermented with mold. Almost like a salami. Mango, we have a mandarin quads. It’s a combination of a kumquat and a mandarin. I was calling them kumdureens for a while and it was making people uncomfortable. That’s a little strange. Thank you so much. We have gooseberries. Gooseberries. Oh, uh, this is lychee. Lychee, yep, yep. There are some smaller ones that are called longan, which is actually my favorite fruit of all time. Really? And then of course, cucumbers cut into stars. We have the silver candy pearls, or silver draggies, I believe they’re called. And then a tiny little glass of limoncello. This is what dreams are made of. It truly is. Uh, where would you start in this ensemble? I haven’t eaten a lychee in like two and a half years, so I’ll start there. Jump in. Cheers. Cheers. Boom. Never cheers a lychee. This feels weird. Mmm. Even better than I remember. Mm hmm. I’m curious, when you explore the world of music, do you notice these universal themes? Because you kind of seem like a mad scientist that’s trying to, like, tap into a universal frequency in the universe. Have you found it yet? Oh, um, I have found it. Where? Cameroon? It’s this. It’s this. That’s it. Did we catch that? No? He was never here! No, but do you see these like commonalities among cultures? Yes, I do. A way I’ve come to explain this to myself and others is the idea of different axes by which you can measure sound. And at their simplest form, these are very simple and very universal. So, for example, the idea of high and low. Everyone understands that. Big and small. Did you ever come across the idea of, um, Bobo and Kiki? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, this idea that kind of universally there are shapes. So here we go, look. Bobo and Kiki, right? These principles, to me, make everything. And actually, one thing that I’ve really learned from incorporating my audiences with no rehearsal in the music is that your job is to provide things so inevitably simple and easy to understand that everybody can do it effortlessly and intuitively but without you telling them what’s going on. So, I’ve spent the last few years kind of Deconstructing what’s at the heart of what’s going on. I think a lot of music comes down to speech and the history of our response to emphasis and melody. And I think a lot of rhythm exists in the body. It’s just like actually how we move in time. Yeah. And harmony, those being the three main relationships, I think, with music that I’ve paid attention to. Melody, rhythm, and harmony. Harmony is like the relationship between things in the world. How one thing and another thing combine. It’s food, it’s flavor, it’s like, that’s beautiful. And so, it, music and life are so similar. You know, you, you, you look inside music and you find mathematics and physics and history and geography and all these principles. It’s like unending amounts of detail that reflect life and the universe. So, it’s, it’s no wonder people respond to it so well. Um, I would say food is very similar. I will say the arc of this particular experience is interesting because this, though, is beautiful, bright, verdant, full of life. And then, and then we have this, which seems like something an Italian futurist with really upsetting politics would have wanted to eat. Oh, yeah. Um, what’s going on with the silver cake decorating balls? I mean, I just, you know, I think back to when I was small. A lot of what drives us is our earliest memories. It’s a grabber. What is that? It’s to grab them. This is how you decorate a cake. You would place it and you would just. Oh, it’s a grabber. Uh huh. Just kind of. Oh, that hurts a little bit. It’s not great for balance. I immediately grabbed my finger. I was like, oh. It’s so much sharper than I thought it would be. I have fond memories of making cakes, my mom would make fairy cakes and we’d put icing on and then the final touches with one silver ball, then you really know it’s complete but look at it. It’s extremely, um, yeah, it’s a very visceral visual thing. It’s hard to really taste it though. Sure is, I was thinking about the word genius and how so many people have called you a genius from such a young age I thought about myself saying it to you, and I felt really weird about it. I tried to interrogate why. I think when you call somebody a genius, you’re immediately putting up this wall. Saying that like, Oh, you think so differently from me that I can no longer empathize with you and your experiences. And it feels like something that’s really isolating. Did you feel that isolated when you were a kid because of that? Yeah, I think I felt positive and negative isolation. I think at its best, it was the thing we were talking about earlier on with making your own world. I love this, like, chill, kind of like, frat. Why does it taste like metal, though? Yeah, well, I can see why. At school, I especially felt isolated because the way my mind worked and what kind of, like, lit it up and turned it on was different from other people, I think. It’s like, I wasn’t, I wasn’t really interested in, like, pop culture or sports or, you know, the things that other kids, other boys wanted to talk about. I was interested in, like, what happens if you put these two notes together and isn’t that a funky situation, you know? Yeah, if you look at other artists in my position in the industry, I, I don’t necessarily have a lot in common with them, but I think I’m just also just a person like, I’m just like a person on earth trying to make sense of the world like everybody else so I love the idea that when you walk down the street every single person you see has something in common with you, every single person it could be like you both like, you know, you both love baked beans or you both. More common where you’re from then where I’m from. Yeah I mean everyone in UK likes baked beans on toast, It’s like even the smallest of things. There are always ways you can interact and, and, and connect with people, and I, I really love that idea. And music is, is an efficient way of finding those connections, I think. But yeah, like everyone else, I’m just, I’m looking for the, for those connections that are most meaningful and then, and the building from off the back of those into hopefully create more connections that are more meaningful and, and so on, so forth, you know? Yeah. Yeah. If I wrote the people who really did encourage that level of creativity in your life when you were young, and it sounds like your mom was certainly that, she was a music conductor and really encouraged you to think very freely and express that. Your dad’s been out of your life for quite a long time. You describe him as more fearful, liturgical, disciplinarian. At least as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a lot of parts of both my parents rearing up in me in a way that scares me a little bit. I think we all do. Yeah, yeah. Watching you and your mom collaborate together, it’s like, oh my god, you are her son. What are the parts of your dad that you’ve seen rearing in you? It’s a big question. It’s a good one. Yeah. Um, I think all of us in life have this mixture of like, sort of, order and chaos, and sort of, in a very, very binary way, I would say that that’s my two parents. But in a, in a weird other way. I think that some people live their life with, with, with fear, like with, with a lot of fear. And I, those people have a hard time because fear creates illusions in, in, in your vista. I was saying earlier about how you can make whatever world you want with your attention, but if your attention is on parts of yourself or others that are, that are hard to perceive, that’s, that’s a difficult place to build a life from or build a relationship from. I think my relationship with, with him when I was small was, was hard because there was that fear. There were, there were boundaries that I think he’d build around him to protect him. And, and so I had to build those to protect me. And I think it scares me to grow older and become an adult and realize that some of those barriers are still there. And, um, you know, I think a lot about the idea of being really small. I think all of us have an experience of this when you’re five years old. You, do something to to protect yourself, you say I’m gonna build a wall here, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna close off and that’s how I’m gonna survive. Otherwise, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna survive and Congratulations, you survived but then, then you get to age 30 like I’m now and it’s like Oh, I don’t need that anymore. You know, I don’t need that, I don’t need that wall there anymore. I think they’re, I think both sides are, are, are definitely in me. And as, as same as everyone else, I’m, I’m, I’m investigating constantly what those are and how I can use them to make myself and the world better. Yeah, and I think investigating those things with a lack of judgment, because I’ve found myself, I’ve always had such a massive chip on my shoulder. I often view a lot of my motivations as negative. And I always had a bit of a judgment on that. And I’ve sort of started asking myself the question. Is there such a thing as a negative motivation? Exactly, yeah. I mean, I tend to view creativity as coming from this sense of like, light and love, but like, you’re somebody who, you’re so creative, but you’re also incredibly driven and super prolific. I’ve always associated that, and maybe this is a misnomer, uh, with coming from a bit of a darker place, a place of lack of wanting. I think everyone knows that feeling in their own way. Yeah. Um, I, yeah, I think for me, there’s a, there’s a real power, not just to creating from, from the optimistic place, but from creating from the place that’s raw and real and strange and, and dark. I often say this to people when they ask about this, like, where do you find, where does one find your inspiration? It’s like, go to the darkest corners of your psyche and just, just check it out without judgment. Just be like, what’s going on over here? Whoa, that’s crazy. You know, um, sometimes the only way you can really find those places. It’s not by going into the dark with blinkers on, but it’s actually just by playing. You play, but you radically incorporate. And as you play, your unconscious will be like, Whoa! It’ll show itself in unusual ways, and you’ll be like, Wow, I didn’t realize that was in, that was within me. Um, on both sides, and the dangerous, weird stuff, and also the unbelievably deep and beautiful, joyous stuff. Yeah, I think, I think some of the more, some of my most interesting ideas come from a friction between things that are bright and things that are dark, or things that I understand and things that I don’t quite understand. And we’re never going to get to the point where we understand everything, hopefully, because that would be such a shame. But that dance is perpetually intriguing to me. Certainly not gonna get there before you die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’d say, I’d say. Ready to go to course number four? Oh, oh, not really, I don’t want to stay here forever. We’ll eat, we, the camera’s running out of battery. I’ve been enjoying grabbing the gooseberries with the little candy grab. Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have a go with that. It kind of pierces it a little bit, but you can get it. What is course number four? Jacob for the final course. Your final meal on this earth. We have the vegan rhubarb crumble. We have some rhubarb cooked down in there, a little bit of sugar syrup, some fresh oats on top of there. And then we have fresh cinnamon and ginger ice cream. We made a creme anglaise base with, uh, fresh Saigon cinnamon in there, some dried ginger, candied ginger on top, little cinnamon stick on there. And then we have the Sauternes. This is Chateau Sud Bureau 2011. And there’s a bit of an interesting story behind the Sauternes. I was at a restaurant that’s owned by an 18 time Grammy Award winner. His name is Manny Morroquin, and the sommelier there was telling me about a sauterne. I didn’t bring it up, and I said, Hey, I’m actually gonna be serving a sauterne to a fellow multi time Grammy winner. Do you have one? That would be, I don’t know, appropriate for a musical genius, which is probably why I said I wouldn’t call you the G word. And so he gave me this 2011. You mentioned that the color is a little bit deeper and darker. So shout out to Matthias who told me that this one is a very aged Sauterne, it finishes deceptively light and bright so it kind of should take you on more of a journey of your classic sweet French dessert wine, so. It’s a thrill! There’s the story, It was incredible. That’s amazing. I was watching a jazz trio as this was all happening and I felt like it was I don’t know some sort of cosmic force bringing it together. Yeah, totally cosmic force. So this is definitely the most aged Sauterne I’ve ever had. I usually have more like 2021, 2022. Yeah, yeah. When did Sautern first butter your biscuit? I, yeah, nicely put. I often frequent, there’s a hotel in England on the coast of England in the Norfolk, like the North Norfolk coast. It’s called the Blakeney Hotel and it’s a very classic, very beautiful, very historic place and I’ve been going there for about 15 years, cheers, and they serve Sautern and it kind of changed my life. Mhmm. It is super deep dark very amber and honeysuckle, but then you do get that like floral elderflower finish on it. Some people I think would drink take a sip of that and be like it’s too sweet but that for me is just astoundingly great. Vegan rhubarb crumble. Yeah. None of the other food was vegan. Why the vegan ness on the rhubarb crumble? That’s a great question. Um, it’s almost just like baked into the request at this point because my whole family is like dairy free. Mm mm. So, with crumble, which is meat free, it’s easy to say. It’s vegan. It’s fine. Yeah, milk doesn’t sit too well for me. Cheese doesn’t sit too well for me. If this is anything like the crumble I have at home, which it looks like it very much is. Then it’s just like a frisson of like delight, you know, I’m excited. Please. Let me serve you up there. Okay. Okay, amazing, oh, thanks. Thanks very much. Of course, of course, and then the ice cream. This is certainly not vegan, there is a lot of cream. Yeah, but I love that in ice cream only, people make fun of it because I’m selectively dairy, dairy free, you know? I know there is, what is a degustibus non estis buton, there’s no disputing matters of taste man. Oh, there you go. And this I mean I’ve never had cinnamon and ginger ice cream, as I said before. Yeah, how did you end up, uh, coming up with this? It was just something new that you wanted to try on your deathbed? Well, I’ve had cinnamon ice cream, and I’ve had ginger ice cream. And I just figured, well, why not collide them? I think this is kind of the ice cream for, like, for sickos. Oh, yeah. It’s spicy from both things. It’s really good. A close friend and mentor, Quincy Jones, passed away relatively recently. He had an incredible tribute to him at the Grammys. I’m curious how you grieve through the language of music. He was one of those glorious champions in life who never. dictates what must be done. He just creates the conditions for the good stuff to happen. Um, such as only unconditional support can ever really do. Some people might, you know, knowing Quincy’s kind of past in the industry and being the Trojan that he is, would imagine that he’d come in and muscle around and bully me to do whatever. And he just was just like, you know what? It’s Jacob. Trust him. Let him do his thing. And I didn’t know what the thing was, but I could feel it. And so I pursued it, and he was able to just keep creating, he opened so many doors for me. And he, and he treated me with so much, um, kind of respect, I suppose. And he just, he made the world available to me in a beautiful way. And I was on tour, and um, my phone blows, just starts blowing up. It’s like, hey, are you okay, man? Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I’m thinking, what’s going on? It turns out, you know, Quincy’s passed. I kind of examined where, if and where the, the, the sadness existed. You know, and in a strange way, it’s only up to me this week that I’ve been able to meet that sadness in a sense, because I’m in L.A, hadn’t been to L.A since he passed. Of course, he’s always at the Grammys. He’s the king of the Grammys. It’s like 80 time nominated or something ridiculous. As of right now, I haven’t sat down and felt just a lot of, a lot of sadness. I think I’ve, I’ve felt a huge amount of gratitude. If there’s, if there’s a legacy I would ever hope to leave, I, I, I look to his as one of the, one of the greatest examples of that, because it’s, it’s a human one. It’s one of humor, and depth, and revolution, and courage, and collaboration, and evolution. Still kind of in awe that that whole chapter happened, but you know, all those years, he was this omnipresent force of good for me, you know? It’s interesting when you say that chapter happened, because it sounds like that chapter is still happening, because the way that he lives on in you, right, in all of the people that he touched in that way, when you think about your own sort of death, what do you think that legacy will ultimately be? I know Quincy had always said to you, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans however. Um, like what do you think happens when you die? Do you sort of stay up in that metaphysical space? Do you technically still exist because of the imprint you’ve had on the world? The world will never be the same because Jacob Collier existed, ergo you have everlasting life. I don’t think I can design a legacy, you can’t, you can’t decide to have one. If there’s any world where the things I make as me, a person, can help another person see themselves, you know, in some way, reflected in a way that helps them be alive, then I think, I feel like I’ve done my job. Maybe your most astounding thing that you do is the audience choir, where, I mean, you’ve done it at Glastonbury with tens of thousands of people. I was thinking about what exactly makes us love and revere artists, athletes, chefs, any sort of Yeah, creative or someone doing something spectacular and to me it’s because it reminds everyone of what the general human spirit is capable of but that tends to be a one sided relationship. You watch somebody catch a ball, sing a beautiful aria you’re not doing it, but you have given people the ability or at least showed them the mirror and reflection that you yourself and us as a collective are capable of something beautiful and I think that’s genuine. I mean, it’s actual magic right to create that feeling in somebody truly. My, my earliest memories as a kid were of watching my mother do that, so she would have an orchestra and she would go and then suddenly it’s like casting a spell. It’s like the music would begin, and not only would people leave feeling like they’d, you know, played the music and it was great, but they’d feel better about themselves. They’d feel more connected. They’d feel more, um, open. They’d feel, they’d have more humor. They’d just be more, more delighted and delightful. So, that was, that was my first experience of music. It wasn’t, now sit at the piano and you practice your D major scale, or, or if you get it wrong, you suck, you know. It was, it was that. The audience, choir, as I like to call it, has this, has been this thing that I’ve been obsessed with and, and evolving for about six years now. And my job is to provide, like a context, a, a, a musical context where people who are singing, whether they call themselves musicians or not, they’re all welcome. And they, over 50 percent of them know what, where it’s moving at any one time, so that they move as this body. And it’s just extraordinary. And I have a very particular view of it from stage that no one else really has, which is if like, I get the best seat in the house. Every night I go, wow. 5,000 people, 10,000 people, at the end of last year it was 15,000 people singing, together, at me, these people have never assembled before they will never assemble again. They are strangers. They are disparate and across all these different ages and backgrounds, but they are singing as one, as one instruments one body, wow, what an amazing feeling I think, I think at my best, I hope that I can just keep on making spaces for people to feel like they can come in and they can connect, they can be a part of the thing, and they can walk away with a feeling that means something to them. Yeah, I always think of it in very, like, bare bones scientific terms, despite the fact that I failed AP Chemistry, bear with me. Like, the point of life is just to make the good chemical spray in your brain more than the bad chemical. Just keep those balances up, inspire that in other people, and I think it comes back to you. And cultivate those forces around you, too. Absolutely. Because there’s this experience, and then there’s this experience. And they’re actually the same. A hundred percent. We’re all breathing the same air, and we all came from the same place, and we’re all made of the same stardust, so it’s just kind of like, this important, really crucial realization that I’m coming to really embody and like understanding, which is that we are only as strong as the way that we make other people feel. Does that make you more or less afraid of your own death? I think it’s reassuring to think in that way. A hundred percent. Yeah. I don’t feel the need to hang around. I don’t, I don’t feel like. You know, you sing my songs, you know, nothing like that. He did that to me in the green room, he said, You sing my songs or else. You sing my songs, yeah. It’s just kind of like, you sing your songs, you know, and I’m just, and I’m cool. You also don’t want that. These are the songs, you know what I mean. Don’t sing your songs. You ready to get to the lightning round? Who’s the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with? The first person that comes to mind, and I, I wouldn’t think I’m alone in saying this, would be David Attenborough. Man, I’d love to, I’d love to speak to that, that man about what he’s learned, and how he feels, and, and how things have changed. Uh, what song do you want to be played at your funeral? September by Earth, Wind, and Fire. And I’ll be dancing, not on your grave, but adjacent to it. What’s the weirdest snack you keep stocked on your tour bus? The weirdest snack? I mean, okay, I’m a, I’m a big honey fan. There was a time where I, when I was 14 years old, where I would have one spoonful of honey from seven jars of honey every day. And then I started getting this like weird fungus growing on my tongue. Incredible. It was like, had branches and leaves and [bleep]. And I was like, I’ve got to stop. Anyway, I still absolutely love honey. And now I’m like way under control. Um, so on the tour bus, we have like as much honey as we can. I, I often have Manuka honey on the rider. So. Like the maximum strength from Dukhani. And like, 24/7, it’s always gonna go down well, you know. What’s your biggest fear? Apathy, probably. My own apathy. Yeah. The only place at the end of that road is just darkness and disconnection. It doesn’t lead you to truth. Who’s your dream eulogizer at your funeral? Do they have to be alive? Absolutely not. Bring him back. Well then, then, Alan Watts. Yeah, Alan Watts, who speaks so beautifully about death. I don’t know if you’ve heard him speak about it, but he’s my favorite sort of death speaker that I’ve come across, I think. Your funeral’s gonna be lit. I’m so excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. I can’t wait. You’ve collaborated with everyone from Bulgarian state television female vocal choir to Hans Zimmer for the Boss Baby soundtrack. What’s one collab you still have your sights set on? Rosalia. Is that coming up? Is that a little teaser? I hope so. I mean, it’s not currently on the cards, but hopefully it’s on the cards. Which Quincy Jones quote do you think you’re most going to remember going forward? There’s one I often think about. Well, there’s so many with Quincy, but Quincy would often say, Play it, don’t say it. What’s your greatest regret in life? The ways in which the people I love have had to sacrifice for, for me to be able to be the me that I am. Yeah. Finally, Jacob, are you happy? I am happy, yeah. Well, I am absolutely happy that I got to share this meal with you. If you want to look in that camera right there and deliver your last words. Oh, I’d have to sit down and think about this for longer than a distracted hour. But I think what I’d maybe say is, to, to anybody who wants to change the world, um, it might feel like the world that’s most worth changing is the world outside of you. It may also feel like the way to change the world is to stand against people or stand against things and hold up a flag and say, I’m not this and I’m not that. But I would say that, first of all, the only world you can ever change is your own world. And the only world you can ever build is your own world. And your world is worth building. And your imagination is worth taking seriously. Um, so please do that for the sake of everybody. Everybody needs you to speak from that place and articulate that for us. Because that’s why you’re here. Um, and to the second point I made, I think that sometimes the most brave, irreverent, courageous, counter culture, world changing thing you can actually do is be kind. And be gentle. Because I think that in a world where standing against things is, yeah, such, such the way that people identify. Standing for yourself and being kind to people and being willing to be wrong and to change shape and change your mind. But just, just knowing that you are enough, you have enough of what you need always to do the next piece of learning that you need to do. As the great K Tempest once said, Nothing I’ve learned could prepare me for everything else that needs learning. Um, if you show up and be kind, and know yourself, then you’ve done a hundred percent of your job and your duty as a human, and um, so, so maybe, maybe there’s something in, in that. I would say. Jacob, I think that’s it. I think you did it. Imagine if we gave you time to prepare, my God. No, that was really beautiful, man. This whole meal was beautiful. Your perspective, your art, everything is absolutely fantastic, man. Everyone, make sure to check out Jacob Collier on, uh, where do they check you out? In the cinnamon and ginger ice cream flavors in restaurants near you. And, um, I don’t know, wherever you find me, I’ll be there. You’ll see I’m around. Hey, cheers, man, this is incredible, truly. Thanks, cheers. M’chaim. The perfect way to elevate all of your meals. The Last Meals bar set is available now at mythical.com.