#frequency movie (2000) fusion

[sapphireginger]

Title: You’re On My Frequency

Summary:

As he was about to take a sip of his drink, the radio in his office crackled to life and his grip crushed the glass in his hand. He marched in there and grabbed the microphone, his voice steely as he said, “Whoever the fuck this is needs to stop. This is my station. So, just stop it okay?” He was panting after his chastening, and thought that would be the end of it until…

“Who is this?”

Square Filled: Changing the Past

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Warnings:

Past Character Death

Suicidal Thoughts

Alcohol

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Steter [Stiles Stilinski + Peter Hale]

@thebo3bingo

June 1st, 2021

One day, Stiles was sitting in his FBI issued SUV when the radio clicked on all by itself. It was weird and he almost turned it off. That was until he heard the call code and his breath stuttered. He shut it off and shook his head. No. No way. He elected to ignore it. He had places to be and an anniversary coming up. He didn’t need this shit.

However, strangely enough, it wasn’t just the FBI SUV radio that was acting up. It was his pal Thomas’s cruiser radio. It was the captain's radio. It was the store radio. It was every single radio and yet no one else heard it or acted any different. Stiles assured himself over and over again that it was nothing as he grabbed the bouquet of flowers and winced at the rain outside. At least he brought an umbrella right? Oh. That’s right. He left it in the car. So a soaking wet Stiles quickly ran towards his car. Suddenly, he tripped, crashing to the ground, the flowers getting crushed and well he just sat there and started to cry.

An angry, dirty and grieving Stiles got home and headed to his office. He should shower but fuck that. The fireplace was lit and he cradled a glass of whiskey as he stared at the picture on the mantle. “I might join you soon. I swear I’m going crazy. You’re supposed to be here and you’re not.”

As he was about to take a sip of his drink, the radio in his office crackled to life and his grip crushed the glass in his hand. He marched in there and grabbed the microphone, his voice steely as he said, “Whoever the fuck this is needs to stop. This is my station. So, just stop it okay?” He was panting after his chastening, and thought that would be the end of it until…

“Who is this?”

“Who are you?!” Stiles demanded.

“PH—89.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I assure you it’s my code. Who are you and how did you access this? It can’t be your station. It’s my father’s.”

Stiles froze at that and oh yeah, he has definitely gone crazy. “What’s your name?” he asked, glancing at the inscription on the radio.

“Peter Hale.”

When did the room get blurry and why was he so cold all of a sudden? Stiles didn’t know, but he would recognize that voice anywhere. He just didn’t understand. “Oh. I’m Sti—Genim. Though my mom always calls me Mischief.”

“Father says I’m a troublemaker but I think he’s just annoyed he never can figure out how I pull half the shit I pull.”

Stiles chuckled and glanced at the inscription again, letting his thumb brush over it. He smiled and pressed the button again. “Well get this…once when I was about twelve I think? Anyway I went around our home and moved everything a half inch to the left. It really frustrated my mom. She still has no idea how I did it.”

A laugh echoed from the radio and Stiles got chills. He knew that laugh. “That’s priceless dude.”

Stiles sputtered. Peter used dude? He scoffed, and Peter had given Stiles such a hard time about it. That made his smile fade because gave was the keyword. Past tense. The ten year anniversary of Peter’s death was coming up. Stiles would never be able to forget the worst day of his life.

Amber eyes flooded with tears but he pushed through it to continue the conversation. Whoever this was sounded enough like Peter that it was helping. Surely it wasn’t going to hurt anything if they talked more. Right? “Right? She always says I’m her Mischief maker but I prefer Master of Mischief and Chaos. What a mouthful that was for a six year old. Not like my full name though.”

The man whose voice was almost identical to Peter’s replied quickly. “Well, I bet I could say your name. What is it?”

Stiles snorted, his heart aching a bit. That was what Peter had said the first time too and well Stiles knew Peter was able to say it which was why he didn’t give his name this time. It would hurt too much.

“So, Peter Hale. Tell me about you? Are you even old enough to be on this?”

The offense and eyebrow quirk were obvious despite not seeing his face, or maybe that was just Stiles’s imagination.

“Listen here, Genim. I’ll have you know my father said I could use this as soon as I turned eighteen. I’m nineteen now. So there!”

Stiles snorted even as he froze again. Nineteen. Stiles remembered nineteen with Peter and fought back a gut wrenching sob. Stiles’s best friend Peter was nineteen when he died. Suddenly, Stiles was regretting this. He should shut it off and throw it away but the inscription prevented such an action. He simply couldn’t get rid of it. The radio was Peter’s and had been Mr. Hale’s radio before that.

“Dude?” Doppelgänger Peter’s voice said. “That was kind of a churlish response for me to give you, but how do I know you’re not some forty year old creep?”

“True, but if I said I wasn’t, would you believe me?”

Doppelgänger Peter didn’t even hesitate. “Well, yeah.”

Stiles scoffed. “Really?” he sneered, pain lodged in every fiber of his body. “How naive of you. You shouldn’t be so trusting!” He stilled and sighed, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes to stop the flow of tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Something is eating at you man. Come on. Tell me all about it, sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart? You don’t know me.”

“Maybe not but you need an ear and I have two. Go for it.”

“You’re gonna wish that you hadn’t offered.”

“We’ll see. You just let me be the judge of that.”

Stiles sighed and took a deep, steadying breath. He had never really talked to anyone about what happened except his mother and well they weren’t talking now. She might as well have been living hundreds of miles away because that’s how it felt to gaze at the house when he drove by it on his way into work. He was cruel in his words. He lashed out and now it was just him, a portrait of Peter and this stranger on the radio.

“There’s a day coming up that sucks for me. I guess this entire month sucks for me. I lost someone very important to me. It’s really just me now. I have my mom but we don’t talk anymore. It’s my fault but…”

“What was the date of it if it’s okay to ask?”

Stiles huffed. “I’d never forget. June 5th, 2011.”

Silence is the response he got, silence and the crackling of static. After waiting he tried again. “Wishing you hadn’t asked?”

The voice still eerily like Peter’s was so soft when it spoke again. “Dude. Today is June 1st. 2011.”

Rage flooded Stiles's body at that moment and he smashed the lamp. “Don’t fuck with me and my grief. You have no idea what—who—I lost, Peter.”

“You’re right I don’t but I just looked at the calendar. I’m serious. I’m not being insensitive. I might be an asshole but not that kind of one.”

Stiles was only able to see red and he smirked. “All right. I’ll tell you something that happened earlier that year on April 28th, 2011.”

Peter cleared his throat. “Okay. I’m not a fan of that day but go ahead.”

Yeah this was freaky. “My best friend—whom I loved—and I went into the academy together. We dreamt of being agents for the FBI. Something went wrong in one of the shooting practices. A gun was tampered with and my best friend he—He nearly lost his leg. We got in a fight and he told me he’d never be an agent now and I should just go on without him but I told him not without him. He called me stupid and naive.

“We stormed away and the one fucking time we don’t stick to our never walking away angry…it’s the last time I saw him. On June 5th, 2011…our superior brought me in and sat me down. They had found his body. He’d been attacked by someone who I still haven’t been able to catch. I know the case like the back of my hand and 10 years later I’m no closer than I was then. So tell me Peter Hale. What happened to you on April 28th that makes you not a fan of that day?”

Stuttering breaths came through the radio. “Who are you man? Have you talked to Stiles? Did he tell you?”

Stiles hissed and stepped back. Nope. Not possible. He was drunk. Yeah. Yep. Yes, totally drunk and this was just a manifestation of his grief.

“Goodbye, Peter Hale.”

The protests were a blur as he shut off the frequency. He glared at the inscription. “Fucking bullshit.”

Stiles went to bed, determined to sleep off this horrible night. Maybe he would even be lucky enough to not wake up and would finally be with Peter again.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

June 1st, 2011

Meanwhile, on June 1st, 2011, a very pale faced boy who now looked so much younger than nineteen yanked his phone out and dialed the number he knew by heart.

“‘Ello?” a voice croaked.

“Stiles?”

“Oh. Hey. You good? It’s like…Shit Peter! It’s after 2 in the morning. If you’re gonna yell please just—”

“I’m not. I’m calling to apologize. I didn’t mean it. You’re my best friend since diapers and I want to be there when you graduate at the top of your class because you absolutely will.”

Stiles's voice was soft but hopeful. “Really?”

Peter smiled, his cheeks twinging pink. “Really really.”

They were both grinning like loons but Peter was scared that the conversation he had earlier was some kind of premonition but either way, at least this way he could make sure it didn’t happen. Ever.

“We should get some sleep,” Stiles whispered.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

“Goodnight, Mushu.”

“Hey Bambi?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Stiles’s breath hitched and Peter heard his bedding rustle. “Dick move you jerk,” he said sniffling. “Doing love confessions over the phone is such a dick move.”

Peter smirked. “Yeah. That’s me. A dick.”

“It’s a pretty dick.”

“Been taking peeks there, Stilinski?”

“You wish, Hale!”

“No point in wishing for something, you already know is happening.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, I don’t you jerk. I actually lo—”

“Stiles?”

“Sorry! I dropped the phone. My hands were shaking.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Come over and I’ll fix that.”

“Wait. Like right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

“Wooooooow! Are you booty calling me, Hale? That’s bold even for you. What if I want to be wooed?” he teased.

Peter smiled fondly. “Then I shall woo the fuck out of you. Your training is complete and all that’s left is testing. So this next week or so it’s you, me and Marvel. You down?”

“I’m so down, dude. Just remember the testing is June 5th at 9 am. Come watch? I’ll feel better knowing you’ll be there.”

Peter thought back to the words of the stranger Genim. “I’ll be there. I promise.” After all, if he hadn’t called he was waiting for Stiles to call first and he wouldn't have and now Peter sounded crazy but his gut was telling him not to ignore this. So, he didn’t.

Instead, they said goodnight again before hanging up. A part of Peter needed to know more details but if this was a universal wire crossing thing he didn’t know if he would be able to get back through. He would definitely try but he was already thinking of how to convince Stiles to add Star Wars to their weeks of hanging out.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

June 2nd, 2021

Stiles woke with no hangover, realizing he didn’t drink and now had nothing to blame the previous night's bout of insanity on. He got up, threw back his covers, and told himself that he was just going to check, that was all.

The radio clicked on and Stiles felt like it was the right thing to do.

“Genim?”

Stiles blinked. “Hello, Peter Hale.

“Uh hey! So um this is weird.”

With a snort, Stiles replied, “Weird doesn’t begin to cover it. I mean fucking hell. How?”

“I don’t know dude. I swear I’m as confused as you, but listen. Did your best friend call you after the fight?”

“No. Neither of us reached out. Stubborn fuckers that we were. Why?”

Doppelganger Peter’s voice came through again. “Just hear me out, okay?”

“No promises, kid.”

That got him a slightly annoyed huff before the other started speaking. “Fine. So my best friend is named Stiles. He and I got into a fight at the academy. My fear of not achieving our dream together like we always planned kept me from reaching out. Until you. I called him last night and I told him, I love him.”

Stiles gripped the desk hard, his vision whiting out for a moment and then fading as black spots danced around his vision. Wait. So, Peter called him, HIS Peter. The dick did his first love confession over the phone. “It was a dick move.”

Peter gasped. “That’s what he said. Dude. Dude. Duuuuude. Dude! Holy shit!”

“Peter, is there anything custom about your radio?”

“Huh? Well, I mean, not really? Oh! There’s a small silver plaque with an inscription. Why?”

Stiles traced it with his thumb. “What’s the first sentence?”

“A star shoots across the sky hurtling through the dark…” Peter trailed off.

“And the shadows converge to swallow the dying spark,” Stiles finished.

Peter gasped. “How did you—”

“I added to it.” Stiles softly interrupted. “But upon the world it has made its mark and from the memories of its gazers it will never depart.”

𝙰 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚔𝚢 𝚑𝚞𝚛𝚝𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚔

𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚍𝚘𝚠𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚐𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚔

𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚞𝚙𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚖𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝚒𝚝𝚜 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚒𝚝𝚜 𝚐𝚊𝚣𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝.

“That’s beautiful,” Peter replied. “I have so many questions.”

Stiles chuckled, wanting to believe it but still, he hesitated. “Ask your friend what his middle name is. Let me know what he says?”

Peter hesitated and then replied easily with, “Will do. He’s due any moment.”

“Really? Why is—”

“Oh! Hey, Bambi!”

A painful lurch exploded in Stiles’s heart at the nickname he hadn’t heard in ten years. Another voice joined and Stiles muted himself to hide his whimper.

“Hey, Mushu. What are you doing?”

“Oh, just messing with the radio.”

“Oooo talking to a boy?” he teased and Stiles bit his lip, his head pounding. He remembered this conversation.

“No! I mean kinda. His name is Genim.”

Silence and then…

“How the fuck did you end up finding someone to talk to who has my middle name as their first name?!” He grabbed the mic. “Who are you buddy? What game are you playing?”

“No game. Just a nightmare more like it.” 2021 Stiles managed to get out his reply without breaking after he unmuted it.

“Well what’s your interest in my buddy here?”

Peter hollered trying to intervene. “Stiles, it's not like that.”

2021 Stiles agreed. After all, the Stiles there was the one Peter was with. Not him. “Enjoy your movie marathon boys.” He clicked mute again, but didn’t turn the radio off just yet, although he didn’t know why.

“Dude! What the hell?” Peter hissed.

“He’s some random stranger! I was trying to test him. You like him!”

2021 Stiles knew what Peter did next. He remembered Peter leading him to the bathroom and pointing to his reflection. “That’s my type.”

“Yourself?” 2011 Stiles quipped.

“No you oblivious idiot.” Peter stepped closer, meeting Stiles’s gaze in the mirror. “It’s you. My type is you and only you.”

That was when 2021 Stiles finally turned the radio off. He wasn’t ready to listen to himself losing his virginity. He was already getting flashes.

He turned around to leave the office and his gaze settled on the living room. All the air left his lungs when he caught sight of something that hadn’t been there last night.

Shockingly, when he reached the living room, there was a new picture on the mantle. He nearly fainted at the sight of it. It was him and Peter at their academy graduation. “No. Fucking. Way.”

[ao3feed-peterstiles]

Youre On My Frequency

Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/50217445 by sapphireginger As he was about to take a sip of his drink, the radio in his office crackled to life and his grip crushed the glass in his hand. He marched in there and grabbed the microphone, his voice steely as he said, “Whoever the fuck this is needs to stop. This is my station. So, just stop it okay?” He was panting after his chastening, and thought that would be the end of it until… “Who is this?” Words: 2769, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 8 of Bingo Of Our Own (sapphireginger) Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski Additional Tags: 2011 Stiles Stilinski, 2021 Stiles Stilinski, 2011 Peter Hale, Frequency Movie Fusion, Frequency (2000) - Freeform, Past Character Death, Changing the past, Bingo of Our Own: Changing the Past, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Suicidal Thoughts Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/50217445

[randomvarious]

Moby - “Bodyrock” Crossing All Over! Volume 10 1999 Big Beat

You all know who Moby is. He’s one of the most successful, talented, and eclectic electronic music producers of his generation. He’s the American who made big beat and sample-laden dance tracks achieve popularity in the US at the turn of the century. He’s an electronic music chameleon; he’s techno, he’s downtempo, he’s big beat, he’s ambient, and he’s even punk and alternative rock. He’s had a long, storied career, with plenty of hits and questionable decisions that have resulted in some really high highs and equally really low lows. 

By the time Moby released his fifth album, Play, which ended up becoming considered by many critics to be one of the greatest albums ever recorded in the history of music, he thought it was his final album. Just four years prior, he had released the critically acclaimed Everything Is Wrong, which Spin named its album of the year. He ended up selling a respectable 250,000 copies of the record worldwide, but for the amount of praise it received, and for being on a major label (Elektra), it was a mediocre showing. From jump, that appeared to be Moby’s curse, as it was for most electronic talents: good music, but bad sales; a niche market conquered, but little else beyond that.

Whatever likability Moby had accrued since the UK success of his 1991 techno track, “Go,” which sampled music from Twin Peaks, nearly disintegrated into thin air with the release of his fourth album, 1996′s Animal Rights, which saw him ditching dance music for a blend of alternative rock, hardcore punk, and ambient music. Fans and critics both hated this turn and washed their hands of him almost entirely. It appeared that everyone was just about done with Moby, and that Moby was just about done with himself. Animal Rights turned out to be an album that brought him within an inch of career suicide.

But by 1999, he had decided to go back to dance and electronic music and the result was Play. However, no one seemed to want to give Play any play at all. Moby shopped it to a number of big record labels, but at that point he was regarded as a has-been; a guy who’d run out of good fortune because of his uncompromising strong will and his insufferable need to be an artist. But Richard Branson’s V2 label, which was only three years old at the time, decided to take a chance on it.

From a quote in Rolling Stone:

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.

Most of the critics adored Play and saw it as a work of contemporary creative genius; a real mover-of-the-sticks kind of album. No one, at least no American, had ever made an album quite like it before. It was uptempo, it was downtempo, it had blues samples, it had breakbeats, it was more than danceable, and it was also quite emotional and vulnerable. It was an amalgamation of a lot of different things, and it was a beautiful representative mess of the post-modern, recently-formed digital age, which, at the time, appeared to be bringing the world closer together than it had ever been before, at least from a cultural standpoint. It was music that had a little something for just about everyone. But that was what initially appeared to have ben its fatal flaw, too. See, Play didn’t fit into any pre-defined, carefully crafted, easily marketable categories; It wasn’t rock, it wasn’t pop, it wasn’t hip hop, and it wasn’t R&B. So radio and MTV passed on every song. The album certainly had no home in America, and it didn’t sell all that well in the UK either. 

So Moby decided to sell the album out, literally. He licensed every single song off of Play for commercials, TV, movies, and video games, which were all industries that were more receptive to the varied sounds of the album. People would be exposed to Play through other indirect and less conventional means. And with every track licensed and songs appearing in nearly every medium that had audio, except for radio and MTV, Play, almost a year after its release, started to finally gain some commercial traction.

Here’s an illuminating Moby quote from that same Rolling Stone article:

Almost a year after it came out in 2000 I was opening up for Bush on an MTV Campus Invasion Tour. It was degrading for the most part. Their audience had less than no interest in me. February in 2000, I was in Minnesota, I was depressed and my manager called me to tell me that Play was number one in the UK, and had beat out Santana's Supernatural. I was like, :But the record came out 10 months ago.” That's when I knew, all of a sudden, that things were different. Then it was number one in France, in Australia, in Germany—it just kept piling on. [...] The week Play was released, it sold, worldwide around 6,000 copies. Eleven months after Play was released, it was selling 150,000 copies a week. I was on tour constantly, drunk pretty much the entire time and it was just a blur. And then all of a sudden movie stars started coming to my concerts and I started getting invited to fancy parties and suddenly the journalists who wouldn't return my publicist's calls were talking about doing cover stories. It was a really odd phenomenon.

Play only peaked at #38 on the Billboard 200, but it sold two million copies in the States alone. It was on charts across the world for several fucking years. And it finally brought dance music to the American mainstream.

There were two songs that almost didn’t make it onto Play though: “Porcelain,” which Moby hated, and “Bodyrock,” which Moby’s two managers hated. His managers complained that “Bodyrock” was a total ripoff of Fatboy Slim, which...fair..., and that it was tacky. But Moby wanted to keep it on there. He had sampled a classic hip hop song by Spoonie Gee and the Treacherous Three for it called “Love Rap,” which held sentimental value for him, and is the only vocal sample on the song (”Non-stop y’all, to the beat y’all, the body rock y’all...”). 

At the top of this post, I called Moby an electronic music chameleon, and “Bodyrock” is the song that saw him almost seamlessly morphing into a god of the big beat sound, somehow briefly placing himself among the ranks of The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and of course, the aforementioned Fatboy Slim. And he managed to do it with just one fucking song. For “Bodyrock,” Moby basically took all the things that got those three big beat acts constantly lumped into the same category, as well as all the things that made them stand apart from each other, and then he mortared-and-pestled it all to death, reducing it all into a fine powder that he could re-arrange and re-apply into his own stunning creation.

“Bodyrock” is a song that’s layered wonderfully and fuses sounds from many different instruments and genres to make something that’s intense as hell, especially for a mainstream audience, but still highly enjoyable. It’s a perfect fusion of rock, hip hop, and dance music, all packaged together into one, solidly cranking song. 

Moby starts with the drum-and-vocal sample from Spoonie Gee and The Treacherous Three and then adds two layers of guitars, one with an acidified, throttling, crunchy funkiness, a la Fatboy Slim, that’s inspired by Gang of Four’s 1981 track, “What We All Want,” and one with a thin and whining kind of wah that’s also a bit funky, and which later on becomes an integral part of the chorus. Then Moby infuses the track with some hardness, with heavy drums and bass, as well as hand-claps. Rapper Nikki D, who released an album on Def Jam in 1991, then proceeds to appear out of nowhere for the chorus, pretty clearly trying to sound like MC Lyte’s nearly-forgotten 1996 jam, “Cold Rock a Party”. And along with Ms. D comes the most important piece of the recipe, the bow and ribbon that ties the whole song together, the streaming and high-pitched cinematic strings, which replace the Gang of Four-styled guitar, and are underlaid with a rumbling, motoring, thick bassline that also plays along to the string melody itself. 

Two unique and brief pieces then come later on, one that sounds like a combination of clean and dirty aquatics, with a brief, pleasant keyboard melody that sounds submerged in water, but still near the surface, and a swampy and swishy, mud-in-your-galoshes type of rhythm beneath it. Then, before the song’s final push, the other brief piece appears, which sounds like those frequencies you might hear from a hearing test machine, laced with Nikki D’s vocals, the drum break from Spoonie Gee and The Treacherous Three, and some bounding bass.

To close out the masterpiece, Moby lets the chorus ride, and then adds the “Love Rap” vocal back in. You’d think playing two vocals concurrently would clash and make the song unlistenable at that point, but somehow, they don’t. They happen to work really well, and when played together along with everything else, they yield the most intense and enjoyable part of the song.  

Play ended up having a total of twelve music videos and a quarter of them were for “Bodyrock”. The first two have a similar theme of British guys, all of whom except for one are white, dancing terribly, but also passionately:

The second one features a car explosion at the end!:

And the third one, which has a Run-D.M.C. cameo (!), shows Moby donning special sunglasses that allow him to see talented dancers everywhere:

Even almost a year after Play was released, it appeared that it was going to be Moby’s swan song and the death of his career. But the decision to license changed all of that, and if ever there was some kind of universal music award for “comeback artist of the year,” Moby would have absolutely won that thing. But in the immortal words of LL Cool J, “don’t call it a comeback,” because while the original best hope for Play was to return to the similar sales and critical appeal of Everything Is Wrong, it managed to far exceed that wishful and shortsighted forecast. Moby was comeback artist of the year and damn near MVP also. It was a wild, totally unexpected, and fantastic turn of events for his career and wellbeing. He almost stopped making music, but now he can’t stop making music. He released an album just this year.

I wholeheartedly agree with the critics who list Play as one of the greatest albums ever made. Not only is it fucking tremendous on its own, but It marked a much-needed turning point for Moby’s career, which undoubtedly kept him going, and still keeps him going today. And one of the many amazing songs on that album that makes Play what it is, is that consummate, brief bit of big beat greatness, that banger of a cut that almost didn’t make it onto the album, the one and only “Bodyrock”; a song that still manages to bop as hard as it did when it originally came out 20-plus years ago.