Background
The second half of the nineties saw Moby in career turmoil after years of being a successful techno wunderkind. The release in 1996 of Animal Rights, a dark, eclectic, guitar-fueled record built around the punk and metal records that he loved as a teenager, proved a critical and commercial disaster that left him considering quitting music altogether and going back to school to study architecture. He explained: "I was opening for Soundgarden and getting shit thrown at me every night onstage. I did my own tour and was playing to roughly fifty people a night." However, he claimed, "I got one piece of fan mail from Terence 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 than Animal Rights. According to Moby, he shipped the record to every major label (from Warner Bros. to Sony to RCA) and was 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. According to manager Eric Härle in an interview with HitQuarters, their original goal was to sell 250,000 copies, which was what Everything Is Wrong, Moby's biggest selling album at the time, had sold.
Released on May 17, 1999, Play received some good reviews, but initially underperformed commercially. Moby stated, "First show that I did on the tour for Play was in the basement of the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. Literally playing music while people were waiting in line buying CDs. Maybe forty people came."
Read more about this topic: Play (Moby album)
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