Virtual Insanity

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"Virtual Insanity" is a single by the band Jamiroquai, and can be found on their 1996 album Travelling Without Moving. The song reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart in August 1996. The song also charted at #38 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart upon the single's US release in 1997.

Music video

"Virtual Insanity" is perhaps Jamiroquai's best known music video. At the MTV Video Music Awards in September 1997, it earned ten nominations, winning four awards, including "Breakthrough Video" and the "Best Video of the Year." In 2006, it was voted 9th by MTV viewers in a poll on music videos that 'broke the rules.' It was directed by Jonathan Glazer. The single was released in the U.S. in 1997. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Jamiroquai performed the song, recreating the infamous floor moving concept with two moving walkways on the stage floor, going in different directions, for Jay Kay to use to dance on.

Video description

Jay Kay in the "Virtual Insanity" music video

The video consists mainly of Jamiroquai's singer, Jay Kay, dancing and performing the song in a bright white room with a grey floor. Throughout the video, there are several combinations of couches and easy chair, which are the only furniture in the room.

The video earned recognition from critics for its special effects: the floor appears to move while the rest of the room stays still, allowing for Kay to perform moves not normally seen in music videos. At some points the camera tilts up or down to show the floor or ceiling for a few seconds, and when it returns to the central position, the scene has completely changed. Other scenes show a crow flying across the room, a cockroach in the floor, the couches bleeding and the other members of Jamiroquai in a corridor being blown away by wind. This became the second video released by Jamiroquai to be successfully done in one complete, albeit composited, shot (Space Cowboy being the first).

In a short making-of documentary, director Jonathan Glazer describes how the four walls move on a stationary grey floor with no detail, to give the illusion that the floor is moving. However, he does not state where the fourth wall is. In several shots, chairs or couches are fixed to the walls so that they appear to be standing still, when in fact they are moving. In other shots chairs remain stationary on the floor, but the illusion is such that they appear to be moving. The moving walls were not completely rigid and can be seen in some shots to wiggle slightly.

Israeli singer-songwriter Ninet Tayeb used the song's video clip concept for her own video clip of the Israeli hit Hi Yoda'at. In the video, the singer is in a small white room, and slowly paints the walls in Gothic red and black.

Audio sample from Alien

The first 15 seconds of the album version of the song contain sampled sound effects from the beginning of the film Alien, when the "Mother" computer onboard the Nostromo spaceship receives an unidentified signal from a nearby planet.

Song's other appearances

"Virtual Insanity" was covered by WaveGroup for the 2005 Xbox game Dance Dance Revolution ULTRAMIX 3 and the 2006 Konami PS2 game Beatmania, but a different non-Wavegroup version by Thomas Howard Lichtenstein has also appeared on many arcade versions of DrumMania and Guitar Freaks since its first simultaneous appearance on Guitar Freaks 3rd Mix and DrumMania 2nd Mix, also by Konami. It is also available in Konami's Karaoke Revolution Volume 2, which uses neither of the previously mentioned versions. More recently, it's appeared on the Xbox 360 karaoke game, Lips (on some locales as downloadable content and in others as an on-disc song).

In 1997, the song was used for a commercial for the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, with Chris Rock parodying the video.

It was also featured in the American Eagle Outfitters' Holiday 2006 in-store playlist.

In 2007, the song was used in commercials to advertise Space Week on The Science Channel.

On 27 December, 2009, Sezairi Sezali sang this song in the finals of the third season of Singapore Idol.

B-sides

The first B-side of the single is the song "Do You Know Where You're Coming From", which features M-Beat. It was released as a single earlier in 1996.

The second B-side of the single, "Bullet" is probably one of the most mysterious Jamiroquai tracks ever written. The song starts with a 3-second percussion intro, and switches into a longer, very claustrophobic introduction. During this part, very faint vocals can be heard in the background, while the melody progresses. The vocals remained shrouded in a veil of mystery, until recently, after a fan did some "research" on the song. [1] The broken lyrics seem to have been printed out by accident in a misprint of the booklet of the band's second album, The Return of the Space Cowboy.

It should also be noted that the musical structure of the "long intro" to "Bullet" bears very heavy resemblance to the one of "Just Another Story", from The Return of the Space Cowboy and it could be a possible faint remix of Just Another Story and/or a faint sample of Just Another Story.

Track listing

UK CD1 (663613 2) / 12" (663613 6)

1. "Virtual Insanity" – 4:04
2. "Do You Know Where You're Coming From" (original mix) – 4:59
3. "Bullet" – 4:19
4. "Virtual Insanity" (album version) – 5:40

UK CD2 (663613 5)

1. "Virtual Insanity – 4:04
2. "Space Cowboy (Classic Radio)" – 4:01
3. "Emergency On Planet Earth (London Rican Mix)" – 7:10
4. "Do You Know Where You're Coming From" – 4:59

UK cassette (663613 4)

1. "Virtual Insanity" (single version) – 4.04
2. "Virtual Insanity" (album version) – 5.40
3. "Virtual Insanity" (Unreality Mix) – 3.54

External links

• Entry on mvdbase.com

v • d • e Studio albums Emergency on Planet Earth (1993) · The Return of the Space Cowboy (1994) · Travelling Without Moving (1996) · Synkronized (1999) · A Funk Odyssey (2001) · Dynamite (2005) Compilations Jay's Selection (1996) · In Store Jam (promo, 1997) · JAZZiroquai (live, 1998) · Late Night Tales: Jamiroquai (2003) · High Times: Singles 1992-2006 (2006) Films Live in Verona (2002) · High Times: Singles 1992-2006 (2006) · Live at Montreux 2003 (2007) Other Discography · Buffalo Man · Chillington studio · Gig in the Sky