Moby — Play. Story behind the album which could have been the last Moby’s record

It was said many times: Play is a unique album. The rights for all 17 tracks were acquired by TV producers, advertisers and film-makers. The Moby’s manager of that time denies that the music from the record was initially created as a soundtrack. “Many people seem to think that we pitched the music for ads only, whereas the truth is that we just responded to the requests; the ads we selected were very carefully chosen, and we actually turned down more than we accepted.” And it all happened because the radio rejected Play. So they had to go by the back door—to studios and agencies.

Now this album is honoured with golden epithets and branches of the laurel, but after the failure of a punk-album Animal rights Moby didn’t know what to think. He received respect from rock monsters, and he turned away from his former techno-breakbeat-ambient audience. He planned to record his last album, retire and study architecture. And Play was supposed to be his swansong. Together with his manager he went to different labels hoping to at least get close to the sales of Everything is wrong, Moby’s most successful album at the time selling 250,000 copies. Play surpassed 10 million. What’s interesting is that the sales didn’t go so well at the beginning. The three singles released to support the album made a little difference, but didn’t really make it popular. Magazines didn’t want to listen to this music and the radio refused to play these weird kind of tracks.

Moby’s manager Eric Härle: “Most major record labels would have stopped working the album, but luckily nobody gave up on the record; being on the independent label Mute in the UK helped us a lot, because they just kept ploughing on and at some point around seven or eight months after the initial release it turned around and started snowballing.”