Preaching to the choir
From The Indy archive, 2003: Robert Webb on the sound and strife of Moby’s hit ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’
Moby likes to indulge in a feel-bad moment, even if it’s someone else’s. The vocals on “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” come courtesy of the Shining Light Gospel Choir, and were recorded by the folk collector Alan Lomax, whose multi-volume archive of African-American music from the Deep South, Southern Journey, was first issued in 1961. Tracks from Southern Journey provided the meat and bones for several of the laid-back dance arrangements on Moby’s 1999 album, Play. He had been lent the collection some years previously, and was struck by the unrefined gospel wailing that seeped from its grooves.
Armed with a sampler and a hip-hop sensibility, Moby grabbed the vocal line for “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”, worked up a melancholic piano figure, added a wash of synthetic strings, and pinned the whole thing down with a functional, mid-tempo backbeat. Mixing devotional singing with an original instrumental
track in this way is nothing new – Gavin Bryars used the same technique in 1975 on “Jesus Blood Never Failed, Me Yet” – but Moby was quick to receive criticism for his seemingly cavalier sampling (the Shining Light Gospel Choir reappeared on Play’s follow-up, 18).
“I’ve tried to do the right thing. Whenever I’ve used someone’s vocals, I’ve tried to pay them,” he replied in an interview. Moby claims that he has attempted to trace the choristers, without success. “If I find a gospel record from 1946 that has no information on it, there’s no way I can find anyone to pay ... If a church makes a record, but in the ensuing years, the church and record company doesn’t exist any more, and all the people, have died, what can I do?” He was also quick to downplay the influence of the tracks he selected from the Lomax set. “Although they figure very prominently on the album, in the wider scheme of things they were only a minimal part.”
“Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” was a UK hit twice, in 1999 and 2000. “My favourite records are melancholic, or sombre at least,” Moby says. “It’s that age-old conundrum – why does feeling bad make us feel good? Why do people feel good when they’re crying? I know I do.”