Why Does My Heart Feel so Bad? - Technimatic Remix

In the album's liner notes, the sampled vocals are credited to The Shining Light Gospel Choir, supposedly taken from a recording originally made by them in the 1950s. The true source, however, is a 1963 recording of the gospel tune "He'll Roll Your Burdens Away" by The Banks Brothers & The Back Home Choir. As Moby told The New York Times, he manipulated the original vocal, "Why does my heart feel so glad," to fit the context of his melancholy tune. Moby sampled The Banks Brothers again on a track on his 2002 18 album, "In My Heart," and once again attributed the sample to The Shining Light Gospel Choir. It's uncertain why he didn't credit the correct group.

When Play first came out, the reviews were mainly negative. LA Weekly, for instance, scoffed: "There's a song on this album which asks Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? and the reason is because I'm listening to this album." Play only began to sell when it started being played in clothing shops and appearing on adverts.

The New York Times March 17, 2002 asked Moby what drew him to vintage recordings. He replied: ''With older recordings, most of which were simply recordings of live performances, you get the quality of the room it was recorded in, this ghostly kind of presence, which I like. Also, you can take a source vocal that's very neutral and by changing the chord progression underneath it make it take on a whole other character. You know the song on Play 'Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?' The song I took the woman's vocal from actually goes 'glad,' not 'bad' - it's an upbeat, happy song. But me being me, I guess, I put these minor chords under it and manipulated the vocal, and it became something else.''