“Virtual Insanity” – Jamiroquai
(Words/music: Jay Kay and Toby Smith, available on Travelling Without Moving, Work / Sony 1996)
Maybe I’m permanently influenced by the video for the song, but “Virtual Insanity” feels restrained and claustrophobic. It opens with the ticking sound of the hi-hat and the basic piano chords, and when the bass and snare drums kick in, it feels like the song should spring into motion. However, it just doesn’t seem to move at full speed. It’s not that the band sleepwalks through it – it feels like Jay Kay deliberately holds back the reins for most of the song. It ends up working for most of the song, largely because of its sound structure – specifically the wonderful piano chords. It kind of sounds like the world’s best karaoke backing track, and Jay Kay sings in a technically sound voice. Still, it sounds like he’s trying to let the song be the star by staying out of the way while the music does the same thing. It would be fine if he eventually seizes control, perhaps in the bridge near the end of the song. Instead, the whole thing comes up short for me. It’s a good song with a lot of things going for it –a pretty solid melody, a strong hook, and a great backing track – but it seems wasted without the right performance.
Then again, perhaps the plan all along was to make the video the true star. The song has just enough bounce in it to set up the weird visual tricks and nimble dance moves. For most of us (in America at least), we know Jamiroquai through two iconic dance scenes – the “Canned Heat” dance at the end of Napoleon Dynamite and the video for “Virtual Insanity.” While “Virtual Insanity” would get only a fraction of the TV airtime it received in the mid 1990s today, it would probably get millions of YouTube views in 2009.
More on Jamiroquai: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
12 Notes