Music

The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos

Thirty years ago, MTV began to beam a budding art form — the music video — into homes across the U.S. TIME takes a look back at the most memorable clips from three decades' worth of music television

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1990s

Jamiroquai, ‘Virtual Insanity’ (1997)

By July 26, 2011

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/4JkIs37a2JE]

Full disclosure: This writer once made a documentary series about music-video directors, during which Jonathan Glazer said if he had a pound for every time he’d been asked how he did “Virtual Insanity,” he’d be able to retire. The short answer is that the walls move, not the floor. Yet with all the visual trickery in the world, the video simply wouldn’t work without lead singer Jay Kay’s effortless dancing (which he cleverly tried to re-create at that year’s MTV Music Video Awards). It’s that combination of human creativity (on the parts of both Kay and Glazer) and technical flourishes that still make “Virtual Insanity” so compelling to watch.

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