“I never expected anyone to listen to it”: Moby says Play was made in a “completely unpressurised environment”Moby has spoken about the “completely unpressurised environment” that led to the making of his breakthrough electronica album Play.
Released in 1999, Play got off to a slow commercial start, only to explode in popularity – the album has since become the best-selling electronic music album of all time, with over 12 million copies sold to date – after it began to be licensed for commercials and other projects.

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Speaking to MusicRadar about the making of the album, Moby recalls: “The interesting thing is that the music on Play was made in a completely unpressurised environment because I never expected anyone to listen to it.”
“In 1997/98 when I was finishing the music for Play, I’d been dropped by my American record label, and Daniel Miller of Mute Records hadn’t dropped me but it felt like that was because he felt sorry for me.”
“Play was made in my bedroom on cheap equipment and the commercial expectations were so low as to be non-existent, so it was a very unpressurised environment,” he adds.
According to Moby, things changed during the next few records, where he “put a lot of pressure on [himself] to try and make music that would be creatively interesting and commercially successful.”
“But I realised pretty quickly that I’m not good at that,” he says. “Some producers, especially now, are very good at accommodating the commercial marketplace, but whenever I’ve tried to do that the end result has been mediocre.”
The musician, who recently released his 22nd solo album Always Centered at Night, also admits that a young him would not have expected such success.
“For most of my life, up until a certain point, I assumed I was going to make music in my spare time that no one ever listened to,” he says. “I never expected to have a record deal or play concerts or shows to more than 20 or 30 people and certainly never expected to have anything resembling commercial awareness or success.”

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