"Play" 10 Years Later: Moby's Track by Track Guide to 1999's Global Smash

When Play was released, I kind of thought my career was over," says Moby. He's speaking from the sparse, utilitarian Manhattan studio where he recorded the 1999 smash in the years before the walls were dotted with awards documenting its 10 million copies sold. Play wasn't the first album to make a rock star out of an insular techno nerdnik, but it was the first to make one a pop sensation. An effortless blend of atmospheric swoops, block-rocking beats and bluesy a cappellas nicked from 40-year-old field recordings, Play made post-modernism cuddly, slowly but surely striking a chord with critics and record-buyers alike.

But before that, Moby was basically bumbling around New York as a "has-been." After years of being a techno wunderkind, he released Animal Rights in 1996, a dark, eclectic, guitar-fueled record built around the punk and metal records that he loved as a teenager. It was a critical and commercial disaster that left him considering quitting music altogether and going back to school to study architecture. "I was opening for Soundgarden and getting shit thrown at me every night onstage," says Moby. "I did my own tour and was playing to roughly 50 people a night." Career-wise, it was a low moment. Although, he adds, "I got one piece of fan mail from Terrence Trent D'arby and I got a phone call from Axl Rose saying he was listening to Animal Rights on repeat. Bono told me he loved Animal Rights. So if you're gonna have three pieces of fan mail, that's the fan mail to get."

When he finally recorded its follow-up, Play, there was no sign that the album would perform any differently that his last flop. Moby says he shopped the record to every major label — Warner Bros., Sony, RCA — and was soundly rejected every time. After V2 finally picked it up, his publicist sent the record to journalists, and many of them made a huge production of saying they weren't even going to listen to it. Released in May of 1999, Play had some good reviews, but wasn't pushing units out of the gate. "First show that I did on the tour for Play was in the basement of the Virgin Megastore in Union Square," says Moby. "Literally playing music while people were waiting in line buying CDs. Maybe 40 people came."

As slow as slow-burners get, Play didn't pick up steam until the following year. "Almost a year after it came out in 2000 I was opening up for Bush on an MTV Campus Invasion Tour," says Moby. "It was degrading for the most part. Their audience had less than no interest in me. February in 2000, I was in Minnesota, I was depressed and my manager called me to tell me that Play was Number One in the U.K., and had beat out Santana's Supernatural. I was like, 'But the record came out 10 months ago.' That's when I knew, all of a sudden, that things were different. Then it was Number One in France, in Australia, in Germany — it just kept piling on.

"The week Play was released, it sold, worldwide around 6,000 copies. Eleven months after Play was released, it was selling 150,000 copies a week. I was on tour constantly, drunk pretty much the entire time and it was just a blur. And then all of a sudden movie stars started coming to my concerts and I started getting invited to fancy parties and suddenly the journalists who wouldn't return my publicist's calls were talking about doing cover stories. It was a really odd phenomenon."

Keep reading, as Moby goes track by track through his breakthrough album explaining the birth of each song: