Elana Stone On Jamiroquai's 'Emergency on Planet Earth'

Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, ARIA-award winning songwriter Elana Stone pays homage to Jamiroquai‘s debut 1993 studio album ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’.

It comes as Stone celebrates the release of her third studio album ‘Married to the Sound’, and gears up to support Kate Miller-Heidke on tour around the country in January 2025 (peep those dates below). Described by the artist as “Billy Joel’s piano meets Kate Bush’s vocals meets Ben Folds Five’s harmonies but with Unknown Mortal Orchestra or Tame Impala as the house band”, ‘Married To The Sound’ is out now. Stream it in full, and read Stone’s love letter to Jamiroqaui’s ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’, below.

Elana Stone – Married To The Sound

Elana Stone: I was going to go for something cool like Joni Mitchell’s Blue because that was the soundtrack to my first love, but every teenage girl or early 20’s something year old woman has cried and thought that ‘Case of You’ was written just for them. Then I considered Rufus Wainwright’s album Poses which altered time and space for me and changed the course of my musical future but again, too cool. Bjork’s Post was scary and fascinating when it came out, The Cranberries No Need to Argue blew my socks off. Jeff Buckley’s Grace was the soundtrack to my first heartbreak (same guy). Are you starting to get an idea of when I grew up? That’s right – the 90’s.

The band that is probably not as cool to name check from that time but had an equally shapeshifting influence at the time was Jamiroquai – and the album? Their first – Emergency on Planet Earth.

It was Katy Werstack who put the sound in my ears via walkman in Year Seven. She was Polish and beautiful – like a supermodel (I believe she still is). It was my Garden State moment.

What was the song? ‘When You Gonna Learn’ – the first song from the first album of what was to become my favourite band right through to the end of Year 12.

It starts boldly with jazz drums, didgeridoo, vibra-slap and then launches directly into a full string quartet and from there into a full 10 piece funk band with horns and Jay Kay’s Stevie Wonder-esque vocal telling me there was no more fish left in the sea! What? I thought there was plenty more? No?? I was on board!

The first thing you do when you are thirteen and falling in love with music in the 90’s is get your pen and paper out and start writing those lyrics down because my friends, unless you own the tape or the cd ( and I didn’t) that was the only way you were going to learn the words – and learn them I did.

Katy would tape her older sister’s CDs and bring them to school on her walkman and then do this impossibly cool walk in her Doc Martens across the amphitheatre while listening to whatever was new and amazing at the time and then – if you were lucky you would get one ear during recess or lunch.

I think this early introduction may have been the reason I went on to study jazz at university. There is quite a lot of extended jamming and shameless scatting on that record and on the multitude of albums that followed. I had already opened my heart to scat listening to Nina Simone and this album solidified its place (for better or worse).

Unfortunately, Jay Kay massively shat on my love of Jamiroquai by being a total hypocrite when it came to environmentalism. I don’t believe it’s possible to be an environmentalist and also own over a hundred high-octane vehicles and be the fastest driver on Top Gear but this was before social media and we had no concept of celebrities with integrity then. Still, Jamiroquai was the soundtrack to my youth and also encouraged my growing awareness of environmental issues so while everyone was getting depressed and head banging to Nirvana – I was getting down in a different way!