Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay on 30 Years of ‘Virtual Insanity’ & Forthcoming New Album Featuring Thundercat — Billboard

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

It was February of 1995 and snow had fallen in Sendai, Japan. Looking out onto the empty street from his hotel room, Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay — in town while on tour with the band — wondered where everyone was. Heading outside, he asked a woman trudging through the snow, who advised that everyone was underground.

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Inspiration pinged, and Kay, the English musician born Jason Luís Cheetham, went back inside and transcribed the lyrics forming in his head onto hotel stationery. “Oh now there is no sound/For we all live underground” became a standout line of “Virtual Insanity,” the acid jazz funk band’s 1996 treatise on a dystopian future defined by humanity’s reliance on technology.

“Those lyrics, you would be able to turn around and say that it’s kind of come true,” a chatty and cheerful Kay says while speaking to Billboard over Zoom from his U.K. home.

“Virtual Insanity” landed on four Billboard Charts, including No. 38 on Alternative Airplay and No. 34 on Dance Club Songs. But its status as a cultural phenomenon was not only a function of its warm groove, but its instantly iconic music video directed by Jonathan Glazer, who’d go on to direct films including Sexy Beast and The Zone of Interest .

The clip entered heavy rotation on MTV upon the song’s release on August 19, 1996, 30 years ago this month, with this debut preceding Jamiroquai’s third studio project, Travelling Without Moving , released in the U.S. in January of 1997. “Virtual Insanity” won best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals at the 1998 Grammys and the video of the year award at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, where Jamiroquai performed the song with Kay out front on a moving walkway wearing the same fuzzy hat from the video.

On the occasion of the song’s 30-year anniversary, Kay has recreated the moving furniture and fancy footwork from the “Virtual Insanity” video in partnership with Beefeater 0.0%, the non-alcoholic version of the classic London Dry Gin. This new clip reveals what the frontman was reaching for in a close-up frame of the original, showing it to be a cocktail made with the sans alcohol gin. The new version then shows Kay sliding through various spaces — a gym, a formal dining room, a hi-fi bar, etc. — while trying on various hats, a concept that a press release from Beefeater positions as “Proof that, with moderation, Jay Kay can get more out of life.”

The new clip also dovetails with a recent TikTok trend of “Virtual Insanity” enthusiasts recreating the video on airport people movers, the Venice Beach boardwalk and points in between. There are even renditions done in Legos.

It’s a groundswell of interest Kay hopes will extend to a new Jamiroquai album, the band’s eighth studio project and first since 2017’s Automaton . Kay says while the project was finished, as a perfectionist (“I’m a Capricorn, and it’s all or nothing”) went back to the studio to give it “an extra 15 percent I wanted to get out. I wouldn’t accept it any other way.” He says the project will likely be released by March of 2027 and that it will include work from bass guitar hero Thundercat , who flew to the U.K. to work in the studio with Jamiroquai. A lead single will likely be out this year, with the project ultimately adding numbers to the 26 million albums Jamiroquai has already sold since its 1993 debut.

Here, Kay talks about “Virtual Insanity,” being limber enough at 57 to successfully recreate its video and more.

What was your life like in the moment right before “Virtual Insanity” and Travelling Without Moving were released, and then what was it like right after? I wonder if there was a distinct difference.

We’d had The Return of the Space Cowboy , which was that difficult second album. The video for that got a lot of attention and was kind of groovy thing, and still stands up now. When I listen to it now, it was quite obscure and kind of out there. After it, like everything else, I wanted things to be bigger and better.

Was there a particular moment when you felt those bigger, better things happening?

I had a flat in Paddington [in London], and the record company, Sony, came over and sat and listened to the new stuff. They were like, “Yeah, great, like it.” It was overwhelmingly positive. Then they said, “Have you got anything else?” and I said, “Yeah.” Funnily enough, “Virtual Insanity” was the first thing I’d done with Toby [Smith, Jamiroquai’s late keyboardist and co-songwriter.] Toby plonked it out, and I wrote the lyrics in Sendai in northern Japan on tour in the middle of winter, where I looked out the window at all these streets, and there was no one on the street. I couldn’t work it out.

We went out onto the street, and there was thick snow. Eventually, we saw this one lonely lady walking along, and we said, “Where are all the people?” She said, “Everybody’s underground.” So on a piece of hotel note paper, in true music fashion, I wrote out the lyrics, and that was that. So anyway, when the record company said, “Have you got anything else?” I said, “Well, I’ve got this other track called ‘Virtual Insanity.’ They said ‘Let’s hear it’ and then the whole vibe in the room changed. I think it was Muff Winwood, who was then head of Sony’s S2. In his Birmingham accent, he said, “This is it. You’ve done ...

Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay on 30 Years of ‘Virtual Insanity’ & Forthcoming New Album Featuring Thundercat — Billboard | AIPROPX