Jay Kay, frontman and lead vocalist for acid jazz outfit Jamiroquai, has decided to call it quits for a year. The band's greatest hits compilation, High Times: Singles 1992-2006 hit shelves yesterday, effectively ending the eight-album contract that the band had with Sony. Jay has taken this move as an opportunity to take a year off and end that part of his career.
Jay is reported as saying, "I like the sense of closure that the greatest hits album has to it. I've closed this chapter of my career at the right time and it's great. I'm ready to move on and see what comes next - a year off, that's the plan."
Hopefully, the year off will afford the frontman the ability to regain the creativity that has been somewhat lacking in the last two or three years. The magic of songs like "Travelling Without Moving" was slowly replaced by more unfortunate clichéd songs like "(Don't) Give Hate a Chance," from 2005's Dynamite and, more recently, Runaway, one of the two original tracks on the High Times compilation. Of course, that isn't to say they aren't good songs - they just don't show the quality of his earlier work, and as such, news like this has drawn little criticism.
Coldplay, now Jamiroquai - who will be the next mainstream British band to take a break from the scene?
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