Moby: Extreme Ways Song Meaning and Explanation

So, Extreme Ways is perhaps the most famous song by Moby. It is the soundtrack in Bourne Series and one of his best songs if not the best song ever.

Then It Fell Apart

Now, Moby released a book called Then It Fell Apart which is again about his life like the other book he wrote called ‘Porcelain’. Now, I believe the song Porcelain does not have much to do with the book that is titled with the same name.

Porcelain(the book) is mainly about Moby’s life before he rose to fame. The book ‘Then It Fell Apart’ is about his life after he rose to fame around the time 1999-2009. The book(Then It Fell Apart) might describes in detail all the things that he went through around that time, which might be what the song ‘Extreme Ways’ could be about.

Song Meaning and Explanation

Now, this is my explanation. I could be wrong about it but this is my opinion on the song.

The song ‘Extreme Ways’ is just a small glimpse of what Moby was dealing with in life. Through this song, he is mainly hinting us about what he felt during that time period.

Growing up as a kid who was raised by a single mother, Moby was living a tough life cleaning houses for a living, being on food stamps etc.

Moby felt that fame would solve all his problems, but it didn’t happen that way. He had troubles with dr*gs, in love life, etc.

Moby talked about the time he put out the album called ‘Play’ which he describes as a very dark time. His mother passed away, he lost his record deal, battling panic attacks- all these things happened around this time.

Play ended up being a major hit and he sold over 12 million copies of that album. Some where around that Moby started indulging in dr*gs and he did almost whichever dr*g he got his hands on ranging from- coc*ine, ecsta*y, alcoh*l, mush**oms etc.

He narrates an incident in which he found a bag of dr*gs in a toilet at a divebar at 3 o clock in the morning and he tried probably whatever was in there.

So, the song Extreme Ways is in my opinion about what his lifestyle was like during those times. These are things that he is referring to through his lyrics ‘dirty basements, dirty noise, dirty places, dirty things’ etc.

Moby probably went into his own shell and this is what he is referring to when he talks about closing his mind, closing down everything etc.

Then he through the lyrics ‘I would stand in line for this’, he could be implying that he would go through all of this experience as it is special to him.

If he had to stand in a line for this, he would. Again not so sure, if all this is what he implied but this is my explanation.

So, this is what the song ‘Extreme Ways’ is about in my opinion.