Play (Moby Album) - Reception

Reception

Play received general acclaim from critics, despite negative reviews at its time of release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 84, based on 20 reviews, which indicates "Universal acclaim". Robert Christgau praised the album by giving it an A+, celebrating "his grooves, his pacing, his textures, his harmonies, sometimes his tunes, and mostly his grooves, which honor not just dance music but the entire rock tradition it's part of." Barry Walters from Rolling Stone gave the album 4 stars out of 5, declaring that "the ebb and flow of eighteen concise, contrasting cuts writes a story about Moby's beautifully conflicted interior world while giving the outside planet beats and tunes on which to groove." For John Bush from Allmusic, Play represented "another leap back toward the electronica base that had passed him by during the mid-'90s" but also represented the album that "return(ed) him to the evocative, melancholy techno that's been a specialty since his early days", and in some way found him "balancing his sublime early sound with the breakbeat techno evolution of the '90s". Bush selected Play as one of his pick albums. However, the fusion of gospel and house for which the album was most widely praised, also drew some criticism for Moby's style of appropriation, with some critics claiming not enough credit was going to the original (often anonymous) musicians and performers. Others found the commercial use of songs featuring old blues samples to be in poor taste, although once the songs were licensed, Moby did not have personal control over how they were used. Moby also declares his Christian faith in the liner notes of the album, which some took as evidence that his interest in gospel samples was "in good faith" and not purely aesthetic.

Play was voted as the best album of the year in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. In 2003, the album was ranked number 341 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.