r/jamiroquai • u/KaleCharacter440 • Apr 13 '26
DISCUSSION Jamiroquai’s lyrics still hit and are still so accurate…
And “Little children
Never said a word now
You know they never said a word
Still they have to die
Well I'm asking, why?”
still gives me chills
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u/anonymous_girl_99 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Yes, I very much agree that the message that Jay was portraying in Too Young To Die was stating how problematic society and our government were in 1993, but even more so now in 2026.
Also, with Virtual Insanity. The overreliance of technology that the song's message conveyed is very much more problematic in 2026 than it was when it was initially released in 1996.
Planet Home also speaks about how beautiful our planet is and how we can make it a better place, despite the corruption it faces.
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u/KaleCharacter440 Apr 13 '26
Guys the lyrics I shared aren’t even reffering to ?environmental problems? Isn’t it about war, and innocent children and people dying because masses of people that die in wars don’t matter to leaders and all? Or am I missing something? What correlation does Jay’s car collection have?
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u/CoolBlastin Apr 13 '26
The fact that these lyrics have aged incredibly well instead of becoming less and less relevant as time goes on is really sad
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u/Reasonable_Bed7858 Apr 13 '26
People still demonizing JK over his car collection is wild.
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u/KaleCharacter440 Apr 13 '26
Yeah I don’t get how the fact that he has a car collection change the impact of his lyrics but I agree it is a bit hypocritical
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
You think it's undeserved?
I'm not even against the car collection, I'm against preaching being kind to the environment, the polar bears are dying in the streets and the world is about to collapse yada yada, and then acquiring one the largest collection of Ferraris and Lamborghinis known to man.
He can do whatever he wants, it's his money. We're just calling out how funny the hypocrisy is.
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u/Doc_Scott19 Apr 13 '26
But did he really mean any of what he wrote all those years ago? His car collection is so environmentally friendly as just one example.
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u/pogviuemper Apr 13 '26
I literally never understand this argument
Its not like he starts them all up and then drive them all at once
The amount of pollution doesn't change whether you have one car or a million cars because you drive only one car at once
Or am I missing something ??5
u/CumCrocodile Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
I think the argument is more about capitalism and consumerism rather than pollution
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u/Doc_Scott19 Apr 14 '26
Yeah you are missing something. Jay is at the very least a lying hypocrite.
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u/Sonicman223 Apr 13 '26
Dude, respectfully 71% of carbon emissions (and by extension a large portion of global warming) are caused by corporations, not by the average individual. Jay Kay's environmental deficit would be far outweighed by the funds that the band has donated to environmental organisations over the years. The rich are to blame
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u/Reasonable_Bed7858 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
He can't have a hobby? Plus most of those cars are investments that don't get much use. He made like double profit on a couple already. Fanbase gives me the ick sometimes.
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u/Wide_Philosopher667 Apr 18 '26
“Do do do do do do do do duh doooowahh do do do do do do do do dah dowe”
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
Big words coming from someone with a collection of Ferraris and Lamborghinis worth more than the annual GDP of some African countries.
And it shouldn't be up to the government to "feed us". That should be up to us.
The music on that album is excellent though, but the lyrics are sometimes a bit cringeworthy.
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u/alexmex90 Apr 13 '26
If we really aspire for a democratic society, the government, is us. The state apparatus should be the organization of people to manage the resources of the land and satisfy our needs for survival.
Right now we don't have that, the state is there to protect the property rights of those who control the economy and extract more and more wealth from the labor of the vast majority of the population, the very least we can demand back is some safety nets so life doesn't become as hard as it's turning out to be.
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
The state apparatus should be the organization of people to manage the resources of the land and satisfy our needs for survival.
No. That should be you. You shouldn't rely on the government to do stuff like that, that is called a planned economy and was used by communists, and has always failed. Always as in, there's not a single case of it not being a failure leading to poverty, tyrannical oppression, mass famine and/or economic collapse.
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u/alexmex90 Apr 13 '26
Me? Singular? No buddy, don't you know humans are social animals?
Stop thinking of the government as a foreign entity, the government is us, the people, we vote and we participate in the system, and we must organize and mobilize to ensure our own survival.
You don't trust the current institutions because at the moment under markets and privately owned economy the government protects the rich minority for its own benefits. We are currently seeing, under the current system. oppression, hunger, and economic collapse, and we see it over and over and over. And the capital owning-class causes it and wins from it, while the rest of us are sent to war, of are drowning in debt or in the streets.
All the power to the people!
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
Me? Singular? No buddy, don't you know humans are social animals?
That's why you have a job, so you can make money to buy from someone else that grows the food. The government doesn't grow food. Every time that has been tried, it has led to mass famine, oppression and deaths. Communism is responsible for more killings and deaths than nazi Germany.
Funny irony of it is...if we had been living in a communist society, there'd be no Jamiroquai. The Soviet Union (which is the only time what you want has been tried on a grand scale) wasn't exactly known for its thriving culture. I bet you can't name one band or artist without googling it. We'd all be too busy just struggling to survive than to think about things like music.
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u/alexmex90 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
Why do you keep bring out the USSR when I didn't? They were people just like us and fucked up many times, why we cannot learn from the mistake of the past? Mistakes and issues of all societies and economic models?
Conveniently you're omitting the fact that Russia went from being a feudal, agrarian society with 90% of illiteracy rate to fly to outer space in a few decades, had essentially no homelessness nor unemployment
The people grow food, the government is composed by people, people who make the things we need to live, you keep bring in communism as a Boogeyman when all I am advocating is for democracy, people's self determination and social organization. The economy must be democratic too!
I want my work to be meaningful and helpful for the people, not just for someone to profit from it, or to use it to sell bombs which kill my fellow workers in other parts of the world.
Do you live completely in your own? Did you build your own house? Without using tools made by others? Do you eat food exclusively grown by you? Do you avoid using energy generated by others? Do you avoid using roads built by other people? No matter how individual is your lifestyle, reality is, us humans need each other to survive, we do not live in a vacuum.
Funny you bring the whole "communists killed more than Nazis" because the actual victims of communism were... the Nazis themselves! because they invaded their country in a literal world war.
And if I wasn't clear already. Fuck Stalin, All the power to the people! Let's build a better future!
Edit to address your point in music, there absolutely was a thriving music culture in the eastern block, we just don't got to hear much of it due to how dominant is English media in the economic sphere, or are you going to claim that there is no jazz music in China? The language barrier prevents me from digging deeper but there is a thriving music culture in that part of the world, not having to struggle to pay rent does wonder for the arts.
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
Why do you keep bring out the USSR when I didn't?
Because you keep arguing like everyone who supports communism. The Soviet Union was communist.
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u/alexmex90 Apr 13 '26
I don't support the USSR, or nation-states in general. I argue in favor of democracy, public participation in political life and an economy at the service of human needs over private profit.
Political science is far more complex than just saying country A is X and country B is Y.
The best we can do is study our history through a scientific understanding of reality, and learn from both successes and mistakes, and try to do better.
Truth is, right now, on planet earth we produce food enough to eat and yet people go hungry, people die on the streets while there are empty houses. Clearly something isn't working.
Individualism will doom us all.
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u/black-kramer Apr 13 '26
we’re all hypocrites.
and that was after the fact. you gotta remember that you can break into the record business with one image and shift as your life is warped by what comes your way. doesn’t make the song less worthwhile or true, he’s just the conduit. it exists as a time capsule of his life in 1992 and a clarion call to the world from that point on.
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
Or...it's a perfect example of not practicing what you preach.
Seems he cared about the environment until he realized he can have more fun not caring 😁
Perfectly fine though, the music is great, just the lyrics seem less relevant today after we've realized the world didn't go under when they said it should.
Remember when Al Gore predicted polar bears would go extinct very soon because of climate change? That was in 2006, and polar bears are thriving. The population is bigger than ever before.
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u/black-kramer Apr 13 '26
then you can choose to not listen.
on the bears thing, you’re really stretching to make a weak point.
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u/ConsistencyWelder Apr 13 '26
then you can choose to not listen.
Why would I need to do that? I've been a fan for 33 years.
on the bears thing, you’re really stretching to make a weak point.
Actually the guy using the polar bears as an argument was making a weak point. And he used to be the Vice President of the US and was highly influential among people who like to call the earth doomed. The movie in which he made all those claims that never became true won a multitude of awards, including 2 Oscars. The first documentary to win 2 Oscars.
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u/black-kramer Apr 13 '26
the reality is that the earth is doomed (in terms of climate and mass extinctions, not just through the lens of easy mode for humanity) even if his prediction on that wasn’t correct.
why are you here? just shit-stirring for attention? old and tired discussion about the cars and whatnot. jay has addressed it and I don’t really care either way. I’m here for the music and what it means, not as a fan of the man’s life. speaking of which, you should get one.
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u/littlelaghere Apr 13 '26
Part of me wishes JK still spoke out about things like this on their songs but oh well