Happy 25th: Moby, EVERYTHING IS WRONG

25 years ago tomorrow – we’re posting about it today, of course, because we’re not in the office on Saturdays – Moby released his third studio LP, an effort which he considered to be his first “legitimate” album.

Recorded at Moby’s home studio in Manhattan, EVERYTHING IS WRONG was Moby’s attempt to put together a full-length release which incorporated all of his significant musical influences. The end result was a decidedly diverse collections of sounds, but as Moby told Vice in 2016, he didn’t combine them “out of trying to be eclectic, but just because I was in love with all of these genres and I felt like this may be my only chance to make a record.”

Of course, as history reveals, it was absolutely in no way his only chance to make a record, but given that he was still a fledgling artist at the time, you can probably appreciate why he felt that way when he was constructing it back in 1994.

EVERYTHING IS WRONG still sounds great 25 years on, but it was a particularly significant accomplishment in ’94 for an electronic artist to put together an LP that didn’t sound more or less the same from start to finish. Over the years, it’s become a cross-demographic favorite because of the use of its songs on various soundtracks, like “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” in Heat, “First Cool Hive,” in Scream, and “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die” in episodes of both The Sopranos and Stranger Things.

In other words, even if you’ve never heard everything on EVERYTHING IS WRONG, there’s a good chance you’ve heard at least part of it.