Shot In The Back Of The Head
by Moby

Album: Wait For Me (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Moby recorded this haunting instrumental for his ninth studio album, Wait For Me. Tired of the constant push towards commercialism, the electronic artist was emboldened after hearing filmmaker David Lynch speak about creativity and commerce at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts ceremony. He told Entertainment Weekly:

    "I feel like for a while I'd lost my way as an artist. I wanted mainstream success because I thought I should want it. Everyone around me wanted it, everyone at the record company wanted it. So I was like, 'Oh I guess these smart people know what they're talking about.' But I was unhappy. I was in the audience at BAFTA in London about a year and a half ago feeling a lot of artistic confusion. And David Lynch was talking about how creativity in and of itself is great. I was like, 'He's right! Life is short. What is more important: accommodating a marketplace or aspiring make great art?'"
  • Moby's fascination with Lynch's iconic TV series Twin Peaks led to his breakthrough hit, "Go," which was built on a sample of the show's "Laura Palmer's Theme."
  • Lynch created the animated music video, a surreal black-and-white visual that follows a man's dangerous love affair with a woman's disembodied head. Moby had sent the director a copy of the song and asked if he had any existing footage that might suit it. But Lynch decided to go all-out and make the video himself.
  • This was the first single from the album and was released as a free download on Moby's website. He knew that an instrumental was unlikely to get radio play but he didn't care; in fact, that's what appealed to him. "It just made me so happy to have a first single that's an instrumental that can't get played on the radio and a video that could never, ever get played on TV," he told Deep Media in 2009. "And we gave it away for free. But the strangest thing about giving it away for free is it's also in the United States the best-selling song off the record. It's still available for free. Like if you go to Moby.com, it's free. But yet - and maybe this is some sort of lesson the record companies can learn - it's still the best-selling song on the record."
  • This was used in the movies Goodbye World (2013), Charlie Countryman (2013), and Broken City (2013).

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