Everything Is Wrong is the third studio album by American electronica musician Moby, released on March 14, 1995, by record labels Mute in the United Kingdom and Elektra in the United States.[4] It was released with a limited-edition bonus disc of ambient music titled Underwater.
Background
Following the release of two albums, Moby and Ambient, on Instinct, Moby signed to Mute and Elektra and began work on what he felt was his first "legitimate" album, seeking to create a record that encompassed his various musical influences.[5][6] Moby later described Everything Is Wrong as "a record that almost served as a lifeboat for the songs I cared the most about",[6] noting that he attempted to cover as many musical styles as possible not "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."[5]
Moby recorded and mixed the album himself in his apartment on Mott Street in Manhattan, New York, using inexpensive recording equipment.[7]Everything Is Wrong features guest vocal contributions from Rozz Morehead, whom Moby had met while performing on the British television program Top of the Pops, and Mimi Goese, whose work with the band Hugo Largo he admired, and who he later found out lived just a block away from him.[6]
Content
Moby titled the album Everything Is Wrong and wrote its extensive accompanying liner notes as a means of expressing some ideas that he felt were important to him, reflecting in 2015, "At the time, I was—and am still—a vegan and an animal rights activist, really militant in all my beliefs. So I would wake up really angry every day, and sleep angry every night because I thought the world was in terrible shape, and I thought, 'What small thing can I do to express my beliefs that the world is in such terrible shape?' And that’s where the title of the album came from."[6] Inside the album's booklet, Moby provides two personal essays, quotes from notable figures (from Albert Einstein to St. Francis of Assisi), and facts that he has collected regarding subjects such as vegetarianism, environmentalism, and animal experiments.
Everything Is Wrong was released to critical acclaim.[7]Spin's Barry Walters praised its diverse musical range compared to most other "one-dimensional" electronic albums and dubbed it "a hugely passionate album held together by its intensity".[16]Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said that Moby "explodes the boundaries of the genre" with an album "as moving as it is adventurous",[8] while Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Everything Is Wrong "swoops from agony to ecstasy, leaping from the glittery heights of disco divadom to the rampaging ugliness of speed-metal to the refined feel of classical—while always remaining consistently Moby."[11] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau remarked: "Where in concert he subsumes rockist guitar and classical pretensions in grand, joyous rhythmic release, on album his distant dreams remain tangents."[17]Everything Is Wrong was voted the third-best album of 1995 in The Village Voice's year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll.[18] By 2002, the album had sold over 180,000 copies in the United States.[19]
"God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" is featured in the trailer and closing moments of the 1995 film Heat. The song was also featured in the trailer for Syriana along with the 2023 film Gran Turismo.
"First Cool Hive" is featured in the final scene of the 1996 film Scream.
"When It's Cold I'd Like to Die" is featured in The Sopranos,[6] at the end of the episode "Join the Club". Additionally, the song was featured in season 1 and 4 of Stranger Things.[20]
An instrumental version features at the end of the 2006 documentary film Deliver Us From Evil.
Track listing
All tracks are written by Moby, except where noted
A two-disc remix album entitled Everything Is Wrong: Non-Stop DJ Mix by Evil Ninja Moby or Everything Is Wrong: Mixed! Remixed! was released in January 1996 by Mute. The album was mixed by Moby from various remixes that were commissioned by the label.
Track listing
All tracks are written by Moby, except where noted
Disc one: Hard Techno, Joyous Anthems & Quiet Ambience
