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

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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1 on Latin Airplay: 'Fills Me With Great Pride' 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.