"Cosmic Girl" is the second single from British funk/acid jazz band Jamiroquai's third studio album, Travelling Without Moving, released on 11 November 1996 on Sony Soho Square in the United Kingdom and 17 January 1997 on Sony Music/Work Group in the United States. The song achieved great chart success, peaking at number 6 on the UK Singles Chart. It also peaked at number 3 in Italy, number 4 in Iceland and number 10 in Finland. The B-side to the single was an instrumental, "Slipin' 'N' Slidin'", a rather obscure song originating from another old Jamiroquai tune called "Mr Boogie", which was a live-only song. "Slipin 'N' Slidin'", just like "Mr Boogie", also had a vocal version. The song appeared in MTV animated seriesDaria in the episode "This Year's Model". "Cosmic Girl" later appeared in the 2000 movieCenter Stage and the gameSingStar Dance.
Composition
"Cosmic Girl" is a disco song, a dance music song based on rhythmic "looped beats" "to give it an off-center, otherworldly" sound. The syncopated rhythm contains 10 pulses which occur inside a 32-beat pattern, with pulses on beats 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27 and 30. Coincidentally, the first four beats of this pattern are the same as the George Gershwin song "I Got Rhythm". Jamiroquai's psychedelic lyric evokes a spacey environment, using terms such as "zero gravity", "hyperspace", "galaxy" and "quasar". A disco-era aura is achieved by incorporating early electronic synthesizers along with disco-style string parts also produced by synthesizers.
Performance
While the single, and especially its chart performance, received mixed reviews from critics, it has become one of the better-known tracks of the band, and a concert staple. Live versions usually last for 7–8 minutes, nearly double the duration of the album version. In 2006, it was reissued as part of the "Classic Club Mixes" series, which also included "Space Cowboy", "Deeper Underground", "Love Foolosophy" and "Alright". In 2019, it was remixed by French DJ Dimitri From Paris. In the United Kingdom, the song has sold 250,580 copies as of March 2017, and is also their second most streamed track, with 2.75 million plays.
Music video
The video, directed by Adrian Moat, shows three famous supercars driving and racing each other through several highways and mountain roads across a desert landscape from clear daylight to dawn. The cars on the video are a black Ferrari F355 GTS, a purple Lamborghini Diablo SE30 and a red Ferrari F40. Jay Kay appears to be driving the purple Lamborghini with Stuart Zender on the co-pilot seat, but the driver of the black Ferrari is not shown in detail. It has four different edits: Versions 1–3, and the so-called 'Jay's cut' version. In a Top Gear interview, Jay Kay explained that before filming, one car had been totalled during transportation, and the windscreen of the second was smashed after one of the precision drivers knocked the camera off the cliff. Jay stated, "They made three of those special edition 30th-anniversary Diablos, and one was a Jota, so it was a 600 brake car that was not really road legal, so there were only two. So I had mine in storage, and the guy goes to stick it on the car transporter, and then I got word that he'd just totalled this car, there it is , and we kind of had to have a purple one, because it was the purple, the cosmic, you know it's just one of those things. So we got the other one, and I said, "Look, wait until I get there. I'm flying in. Just nobody drive it until I get there, please. We can't afford to smash it". So I came off the plane, and everybody looked really downtrodden, looking at the floor, and I went, "Why are you looking so sad?", and they said, "One of the precision drivers has knocked the camera off the cliff and taken out the front windscreen, so there's no windscreen. Lamborghini can't send one for another day or so". So for most of the video, it had to be done with no windscreen, that's why you see me squinting, and actually trying to sing the song as well, while driving the mountain road". The F40 was provided by the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who drove in the video as well. The video was filmed at the Cabo de Gata, in Spain.
