Jacob Collier Brings Over 100,000 Voices Together For Innovative Elvis Presley Cover
Collier’s remarkable new version of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’ arrives to coincide with World Singing Day.
Jacob Collier once again showcases his seemingly endless stream of creativity this week with the release of one of his most ambitious projects to date. The five-time Grammy-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist’s arrangement of the Elvis Presley hit “Can’t Help Falling In Love” is a creation on an unprecedented scale, a coming together of over 100,000 voices which is set to further cement his reputation as one of the most innovative minds of modern times.
During the encore of each concert on the US leg of his recent ‘Djesse’ world tour, Collier would return alone to the stage and proceed to conduct the entire audience, transforming them into a massed choir, guiding them into multi-part harmonies and creating what would invariably become one of the most-talked-about moments of the evening.
Alongside these nightly mass singalongs, audience members in each city were asked to collectively film themselves singing a different word from the Elvis Presley song “Can’t Help Falling In Love” and to upload their recording using a special QR code. Over 10,000 submissions were received, and it is with the recordings of these two moments that Collier has assembled a video bringing together over 100,000 voices to create a dazzling, one-of-a-kind audio-visual experience.
The video, entitled ‘Jacob Collier & The Audience Choir – Can’t Help Falling In Love’, is out now to coincide with World Singing Day on October 15. You can watch it below.
Jacob says: “To bring 100,000 voices together in harmony has been a dream of mine for so long! What began as an experiment evolved into a fully-fledged extravaganza – to record every word in a different city and piece them all together, using encore-based audience choir videos as the harmonic backdrop. The wild thing to me is that it sounds like the same group of people singing the whole Elvis song – one big choir. I will treasure this video for the rest of my life.”
The “Can’t Help Falling In Love” video is the latest in a long line of boundary-pushing projects that have seen Collier bring his imaginative, ingenious vision into the mainstream. Throughout a relatively short career to date, Collier has turned heads with virtually every move he’s made.
An extended version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love – Live in Lisbon (Harmonizer)” features on Collier’s recent live album release Piano Ballads – Live From The Djesse World Tour 2022.
Whether it be numerous videos featuring staggeringly complex vocal arrangements of classic pop hits, the innovative multi-track one-man solo show which he toured around the world to unanimous acclaim, the Tiny Desk session in which multiple Jacobs seemingly performed simultaneously in the same room, or his visionary IHarmYou campaign in which Collier would provide his inimitable accompaniment to fan-submitted videos, it has been a journey that has astonished and amazed fans and critics alike and one that has also seen Collier make music history as the first British artist of all time to win Grammys for each of his first four albums.
Listen to the best of Jacob Collier on Apple Music and Spotify.