Jamiroquai -- Virtual Insanity

i never knew this guy's name was Jay Kay. what a horrible name. in this internet age, he's known simply as j/k. what an honor to have your name become part of the online slang/shorthand lexicon (j/k!)

man i hate it when my couch bleeds.

my own insanity seems far from virtual these days.

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.

[edit] 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.