Content and ideation

The video consists mainly of Jamiroquai's singer, Jay Kay, dancing and singing the song in a bright white room with a grey floor. Throughout the video, there are several combinations of plastic-wrapped leather couches and chairs seemingly moving around the room on their own accord, which are the only pieces of furniture in the room, and Kay is seen using a sequence of elaborate dance manoeuvres to avoid being hit by them. The video earned recognition from critics for its special effects. The floor appears to move while the rest of the room stays still; in fact, this was the original idea but was later determined by one of Glazer's team that it would cost about £280,000 (equivalent to £559,139 in 2021; ~US$810,000 in 2024 terms) for the rig alone. Instead, it is the walls that move, an idea from one of Jonathan Glazer's crew which was initially seen as comically ridiculous by most of Glazer's team but was immediately recognised as brilliant by Glazer, who called up Kay at about 1am to inform him of the idea. Kay, possibly half asleep, did not understand the idea until he arrived at the set and understood Glazer's intention and saw the rig in action.^[20]

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; this was primarily done to mask the cuts and make it look like a continuous take. 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, Glazer describes how the walls move on a stationary grey floor with no detail, which give the illusion that objects on the floor are moving.^[21][20] 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, the furniture remain stationary on the floor, but the illusion is such that they appear to be moving.^[22] Parts of the floor had tape markings as a reference point for Kay, which had to be digitally deleted in post-production, but Kay said he had to improvise parts such as where he does a blind 180-degree spin on his knees to avoid hitting a wall or when he tiptoes past an incoming couch that was about to pin him against the wall; in both cases, it was only upon playing the footage back that he realised how finely he had avoided danger.^[20]

In September 2021, a remaster of the video in 4K was premiered on YouTube to promote a new vinyl release of Travelling Without Moving.^[23]

Popularity

In addition to heavy rotation on MTV and other music television networks upon release and still to this day, the video for "Virtual Insanity" has amassed more than 280 million views on YouTube as of April 2024^[24][25] and has seen renewed attention on TikTok, gaining millions more views through various internet memes and remixes.^[26]

In popular culture

The music video for "Virtual Insanity" has been parodied, referred to, remixed, or imitated in countless music videos, television shows, and internet memes. A TV promo by comedian Chris Rock was made for the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, whereby Rock imitates Jay Kay in a comedic fashion through digital superimposition.^[27] In 2007, the video's original director, Jonathan Glazer, uploaded a parody of the video whereby the room was digitally turned into a bathroom and had Jay Kay appear to interact with patrons in a comedic fashion, again using digital superimposition.^[28]

Austin Mahone and Pitbull took inspiration from it in the video for their 2014 single "Mmm Yeah",^[29] and it is one of the many songs parodied in the video for FIDLAR's 2015 single "40oz. on Repeat".^[30][31] Other notable parodies include a cutaway from a 14th-season Family Guy episode called "Scammed Yankees", which went viral as an internet meme in 2023 under the portmanteau "Cartermiroquai".^[32][33] It was also referenced in a 2021 episode of Robot Chicken. The music video also inspired a video game entitled Jamiroquai Game, wherein the player must avoid the various objects in the scene, akin to the video.^[34]

Accolades