Jacob Collier is the Grammys’ Brit success story – why have you never heard of him?

Jacob Collier made British music history last night when he became the first UK artist to win a Grammy award for each of his first four albums. It is a feat unequalled by any of our all-time great British superstars beloved all around the world, such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Elton John, Coldplay and Adele. The triumphant ascendancy of a 26-year-old prog-jazz-R’n’B-fusion singer-songwriter who has never had a hit record above such stellar ranks raises some big questions. Who? How? Huh?

Let’s be honest, Jacob Collier was not a name on everyone’s lips last night and was probably still struggling for attention this morning. The world’s media was perhaps otherwise distracted by the historic achievements of women in pop, as the elite female forces of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Megan Thee Stallion stormed the awards supported by a dynamic phalanx including HER and Dua Lipa (who collected a gong for Pop Vocal Album).

That is certainly a coterie of thrilling talents, all operating at the exciting, glamorous and gutsy forefront of contemporary commercial pop. Their acknowledgement by the most high-profile music awards in the biggest market in the world arguably conveys an important message of female empowerment that resonates powerfully at this moment in time. And Dua Lipa is British (born in London to Kosovo Albanian parents), so our once proud pop nation can bask in a bit of reflected glory, even if no one is likely to look at these results and start bellowing “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

But let us not entirely overlook the more modest achievements of a genuine homegrown prodigy. Collier first gained attention aged 17, creating split-screen YouTube videos performing R’n’B covers, in which he played multiple instruments to a ridiculously virtuoso level, audaciously operating digital harmonisation effects to split and contort his vocals.

He sings with the overactive funkiness of someone raised playing Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson on a turntable set to 75 RPM, and plays with the furious hyperactivity of Herbie Hancock on an amphetamine binge – never using one note where he can squeeze in hundreds. His live performances are at once phenomenal and exhausting. Let’s put it this way, he’s a shockingly talented young man but a little bit of Jacob Collier goes a very long way.

Collier still lives at his childhood home in Finchley, north London, with his mother Susan Collier, a violinist, conductor and professor at the Royal Academy of Music (“We sing Bach chorales together as a family,” according to Collier. “It’s just so much fun”). However, he is managed and mentored by the great American producer and arranger Quincy Jones, which might go some way to explaining why he is so admired in Grammy circles despite failing to make much discernible impact on the pop charts.

Under the auspices of Jones, the young British musician is very well connected, and collaborates long distance with a lot of contemporary US R’n’B artists, adding a touch of cerebral musicality to the CVs of rappers such as Ty Dolla Sign and T-Pain. Coldplay’s Chris Martin once compared Collier to Mozart and Prince, though let us be kind and assume Martin was dazzled by Collier’s instrumental ability rather than contemplating his compositional skills. He certainly plays lot of instruments incredibly well, and if he ever gets around to writing a memorable piece of music, he could be dangerous.

In terms of his career, Collier is a Grammy over-achiever, apparently much better known amongst members of the American award voting academy than regular music listeners. His Grammy-winning debut album In My Room reached Number One in the US Contemporary Jazz Charts in 2016, but that represents the commercial peak of his career. Since then, Collier has released three volumes of a four-album project Djesse (pronounced with a silent D, for reasons only known to Collier), which he describes as an attempt to “describe all of the music I had been listening to for my whole life.”

It is every bit as exhausting as that makes it sound. Djesse Volume 3 did not bother the charts anywhere on the entire planet, but somehow wound up on a shortlist of the five albums of the year at the biggest award ceremony in the world. It is a bit like finding out some bloke from your local pub darts team is in the running for BBC Sportsman of the Year.

To understand why Collier is quite so garlanded by the Grammys, you would have to care about the arcane and secretive lobbying and voting system that somehow managed to completely exclude the most popular and successful record in America and the world over the past year (The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights), whilst squeezing in four nominations for an obscure British fusion artist, albeit one managed by one of the most powerful and respected backroom figures in American music.

Look, I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but it’s a pretty strange turn of events. For his part, The Weeknd (AKA black Canadian singer, songwriter and producer Abel Tesfaye) has accused the Grammys of corruption and racism, and announced he will no longer allow his label to submit his music for consideration due to “the secret committees.”

The truth is there are only four Grammy categories that really count (Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist), and everything else is effectively a consolation prize. In a (clearly failed) effort not to exclude any demographic, genre, industry or lobbying group, The Grammys notoriously create categories for pretty much every eventuality, from Best Regional Mexican Music Album (including Tejano) to Best Classical Instrumental Solo and Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance.

There were 83 categories this year, down from a high of 110 in 2009 (for comparison, there are eight categories at the Brits). As a result, the ceremony itself tends to run all day long, and can lead to even the most determined party goer losing the will to live. Fortunately, only the last three hours are televised for mainstream audiences.

Collier picked up an early award for his track He Won’t Hold You (featuring Rapsody) in the exceedingly vague specialist category of Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals, which is one of the places where the Grammys stick virtuosos they don’t otherwise know what to do with. Spare a thought for Jeff Beck, who has five Grammy awards for Best Rock Instrumental Performance but cannot win another after the category was discontinued in 2012, presumably because there weren’t enough other instrumental rockers left to make up a shortlist of five.

So, by all means let us salute this idiosyncratic talent. Jacob Collier is a gifted young British artist, following a very individual path. He is not be the saviour of the British music business, but he has his admirers in high places, and may one day do something that justifies the hype.