Jacob Collier
The seven-time GRAMMY phenom trades maximalist experimentation for stripped-down emotion on his most intimate record yet
Jacob Collier has always been the guy who could do everything — and usually did. Across his sprawling four-part Djesse series, the London-born prodigy orchestrated a universe of kaleidoscopic arrangements, impossible harmonies, and mind-bending collaborations that turned him into one of the most celebrated and singular figures in modern music. But on his new album, The Light For Days, Collier sets aside the cosmic scale and returns to something much simpler: a man, a guitar, and the kind of songs that glow from the inside out.
Recorded and produced in just four days, The Light For Days is Collier at his most present and unguarded. The album features six original songs and five covers — handpicked tributes to artists who helped shape his musical DNA, including The Beatles, The Beach Boys, James Taylor, The Staves, and John Martyn. It’s an album that trades the sonic maximalism of Djesse for a stripped-down, lived-in warmth.
Surrounded by instruments that once filled his YouTube videos and early recordings, Collier picked up his 5-string and 10-string Taylor guitars and began to explore their range — using alternate tunings and unconventional techniques to create something intimate and timeless. The result is an 11-track collection that feels closer to the heart of Collier’s live solo moments, when everything else falls away but melody and soul.
On lead single “Heaven (Butterflies),” Collier channels a dreamy, sun-dappled energy, captured in a new music video filmed deep in the jungles of Costa Rica. The visuals mirror the album’s theme — light, nature, and renewal. Other highlights include “I Know (A Little),” and an arresting live performance filmed on a gondola in Venice, showcasing his knack for finding magic in unlikely spaces.
True to Collier’s spirit of global creativity, each song on The Light For Days is accompanied by a visualizer filmed in a different corner of the world — from Brazil to Peru to Curaçao — many captured during his Djesse world tour. Over the coming months, fans can expect weekly live videos on his YouTube channel, each one featuring Collier and his 5-string guitar performing in stunning natural settings.
Ahead of the album’s release, Collier hosted a listening event at London’s EartH Hackney, followed by fan gatherings in over a dozen countries — from Mexico to South Korea, India to Australia. The celebrations followed his first-ever Hideaway Retreat in Tarrytown, NY, where 300 musicians and fans joined him for workshops, jam sessions, and a surprise first playback of The Light For Days.
It’s been a staggering year for Collier — he earned his fifteenth GRAMMY nomination (and second for Album of the Year), paid tribute to his late mentor Quincy Jones on the GRAMMY stage, collaborated with Bon Iver, and led a choir of 9,000 schoolchildren through the UK’s Young Voices program. He’s conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in a fully improvised concert, performed atop an Arctic iceberg alongside AURORA and Greenpeace, and headlined London’s O2 Arena. The video from that iceberg performance, “A Rock Somewhere x The Seed,” has already been nominated for Best Live Performance at the UK Music Video Awards.
But The Light For Days isn’t about accolades, technical mastery, or scale — it’s about stripping everything back to the essence of why Collier makes music in the first place — the human truth. It’s the sound of an artist who’s stopped running toward infinity and started standing still long enough to see the light.
This fall, Collier continues his globe-spanning tour, performing across the U.S., China, India, and Australia — sometimes with full orchestras, sometimes solo, always in pursuit of that same spark that began in his London music room.
Watch the music video for Heaven (Butterflies) here.
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