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

"Honey"
My friend Dimitri Ehrlich, who is a music journalist here in New York, got this Alan Lomax box set. He had listened to it and wasn't that interested in it and he gave it to me, and I heard all those great a cappellas. I wrote "Honey" in about 10 minutes. My girlfriend at the time really liked it. And that surprised me because she didn't really like my music.

Mario Caldalto Jr, the Beastie Boys producer, agreed to mix "Honey." Keep in mind, at this point, I was a has-been and I knew I was a has-been. I was hanging out at Max Fish and Mars Bar and Motor City drinking with the few remaining people in New York who would still hang out with me. At this time the Beasties had Hello Nasty, which was doing incredibly well, and I just couldn't believe that Mario Caldato, Jr. was willing to work with me. It came out as a single and did nothing. I think it got played once or twice and disappeared.

"Find My Baby"
Basically just me playing slide guitar over a vocal sample. I added what I thought were hip-hop drums to it. In the '80s I was DJing a lot of hip-hip. At one point I was working at Mars and I used to keep a microphone by the turntables. Big Daddy Kane and Run-DMC and 3rd Bass and Flavor Flav and everybody would go to this club and get drunk, and I had the microphone. I was the weird white DJ for all these rappers where were drinking and rapping to impress their girlfriends.

"Porcelain"
Strangely enough, that's probably the most signature song on the record, and I actually had to be talked into including it. When I first recorded it, I thought it was average. I didn't like the way I produced it, I thought it sounded mushy, I thought my vocals sounded really weak. I couldn't imagine anyone else wanting to listen to it. When the tour for Play started, "Porcelain" was the song during the set where most people would get a drink. But then Danny Boyle put it in the movie The Beach with Leo DiCaprio. It was Leo DiCaprio's first film since Titanic and everyone went to go see it. He used the music so well in the movie. I think that's when a lot of people became aware of the record.

"Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?"
"Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" was written in '92 as a really bad techno song. Just mediocre, generic techno. At some point I rediscovered the song and I tried doing it considerably slower, tried to make it mournful and romantic. My manager Barry talked me into including "Porcelain" and my other manager Eric talked me into including "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" It became a big hit in Germany. "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" for some reason struck a nerve in Germany and became a big hit single over there. I thought that was as far as any success for Play was gonna go.