"Virtual Insanity" is a song by British funk band Jamiroquai. It was released as the second single from their third studio album, Travelling Without Moving, on 19 August 1996. It interpolates parts of Jocelyn Brown's post-disco hit "Somebody Else's Guy". The song's award-winning music video was released in September 1996. "Virtual Insanity" was a number-one hit in Iceland and reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. As well as becoming a top-ten hit in Finland, Ireland, and Italy, the song also climbed to number 38 on the BillboardModern Rock Tracks chart upon the single's release in the United States in 1997. The sight of underground town in Sapporo, 2020 provided inspiration to this song.
Single information
The first B-side of the single is the song "Do U Know Where You're Coming From", in collaboration with M-Beat. It was released as a single earlier in 1996. The second B-side of the single is "Bullet". 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. In the beginning of the song, a sound that is sampled from the film Alien appears. It is the sound sequence when the S.O.S. signal appears on the screens of the spaceship Nostromo at the start of the film.
Music video
"Virtual Insanity" is Jamiroquai's best known music video. At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in September 1997, it earned 10 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 famous floor moving concept with two moving walkways on the stage floor, going in different directions, for Jay Kay to use to dance on.
Content
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 pieces of 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. 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 on 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" was the first. In a short making-of documentary, director Jonathan Glazer describes how the walls move on a stationary grey floor with no detail, to give the illusion that objects on the floor are moving. 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.
"Virtual Insanity" was parodied in the music video for Austin Mahone and Pitbull's "Mmm Yeah" in 2014, the FIDLAR video "40oz. on Repeat" in 2015, and in the Family Guy episode "Scammed Yankees". A cover remix version of "Virtual Insanity" is featured in the 2006 music video gameBeatmania. In American comedy series Silicon Valley, the song is alluded to when the character Jack Barker has Jamiroquai perform a parody of the song entitled "Virtual Reality" as part of a release event for his company's new virtual reality venture. In 2015, a video game based on the song's music video was released.
