Theory: "Queen Machine" may have been quietly shelved (or transformed into something else)
I’ve been thinking about Queen Machine, the unreleased track Jamiroquai only played once in Barcelona 2025 (yes… I was lucky enough to hear it live 😄), and I’m starting to think its disappearance may be more significant than just a setlist adjustment.
The common explanation is that it was removed because the show was running too close to curfew, which could absolutely be true. But honestly, after hearing it, I always had the feeling it sounded more like a work in progress than a finished album track.
To me it had a very electronic disco / Hi-NRG vibe, but it felt flatter and less developed than Disco Stays The Same or Shadow in the Night. Some sections lowered the energy a bit, and it felt a little too long and repetitive. Not bad at all, just… preliminary.
Now that Jay Kay has confirmed that Disco Stays The Same was "radically changed" and went through multiple revisions, I’m wondering if Queen Machine may have suffered the same fate:
- heavily reworked into something different
- partially absorbed into another song
- or quietly dropped from Album 9 altogether
And honestly, this wouldn’t be unusual for Jamiroquai, they’ve done this before:
- Do That Dance evolved into Scam
- Let Me Believe evolved into Manifest Destiny
- Brother Like You was dropped
- Midnight Funk, Cannabliss, Funk Odyssey, and Shoot The Moon all disappeared in different ways
- even Synkronized was heavily reworked before release
Jamiroquai has always used live shows as a kind of testing ground, so maybe Barcelona gave us a glimpse of an early version of something that no longer exists in that form.
Curious what others think. Did anyone else feel Queen Machine sounded unfinished? Or do you think it’s still on Album 9, just in a very different form?