Music
The story of The Prodigy told through 10 essential songs
From their toytown rave beginnings to the powerhouse return of latest album No Tourists, we run down a few of Liam Howlett and co's finest moments.
Founded in Braintree, Essex in 1990 by breakdancer and budding producer Liam Howlett, together withdancers Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill, The Prodigy made the dissident sound of rave music into a global commercial force without watering it down a drop.
While their early material was rooted in manic hardcore rave – see debut single Charly, which made smart use of a TV advert for road safety – The Prodigy also sucked in other styles, drawing on the provocation of punk rock and the crunching beats and hard-hitting rhymes of Public Enemy and Ultramagnetic MCs. And the sound caught on – the group have sold an estimated 30 million records, chalking up seven No.1 albums in the process, while their notorious live shows still flatten arenas across the world.
As they return with new album No Tourists, let's run the length and breadth of the group's catalogue in search of their best tracks to date.
1. Weather Experience
Let’s ease ourselves in gently with the Weather Experience, a crowning composition on their debut album Experience. While the album is most famous for its seminal rave crossover hits, Weather Experience was a much deeper indication of their long-game foresight. It's an eight-minute opus that captures everything The Prodigy have always been about. From emotive, beatless cinematic synth sweeps to all-out acid breakbeat fury, musically this runs the whole Prodigy gamut with a dynamism that stands up today. It even features the soothing tones of UK meteorological institution Michael Fish – if there’s one thing more British than raving, it’s weather chats.
2. Everybody In The Place
Following the chart success of Charly in 1991, the Braintree trio struck number two in the UK charts with Everybody In The Place. A rave call to arms made from brisk breaks, a pitched-up Ultramagnetic MCs sample and a classic stabby riff, it came complete with an equally iconic video of the band laying down serious shuffle manoeuvres. Literally everything about this track, both sonically and visually, captures the precise moment rave bubbled over the melting pot into the mainstream. Commercial music would never be the same again.
3. Their Law
It’s 1994 and a whole generation of metal and grunge fans are converted overnight by Their Law. A guitar chugging collaboration with Pop Will Eat Itself, no other track joined the dots between rock and rave like this at the time. It was the band’s first overt political statement, too – this was a clear middle finger to the Conservative government’s rave-quashing Criminal Justice Bill. One of the strongest examples of how raw and game-changing their second album, Music For The Jilted Generation, truly was.
4. Firestarter
Leading the charge of the band’s third album Fat Of The Land came Firestarter – a track that thrust the band’s singular cyberpunk frontman Keith Flint under the spotlight and instantly changed the image and dynamic of the group. More brazen in its rock/rave fusion and more rabble-rousing than anything they’d released previously, the track was their first No.1 hit and caused quite the commotion with stuffy broadcasting officials. Some TV stations banned it entirely, which was great publicity for the single and the album that would drop months later.
5. Smack My Bitch Up
If Firestarter’s video was vaguely threatening, the video for Smack My Bitch Up was an all-out assault. The most provocative track and video the band have ever released, and one of the biggest fan favourites in their live shows, the track followed the group's second number one, Breathe, and whipped up more bans as it smacked its way up the charts to a respectable No.8.
The group batted off the controversy. “If people honestly think that Smack My Bitch Up is gonna make people go and beat up women, then we'll just do a song saying 'deposit all your money in this P.O Box number',” said ex band member Leeroy Thornhill in an interview at the time. The video remains essential viewing if you’ve never seen it – all is most definitely not what it seems…
6. Spitfire
The Prodigy were setting levels throughout the '90s, but their fourth album Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned didn’t quite hit the same spot for many fans. No-one, however, could deny the album’s hurricane-force intro track Spitfire. Powered by haunted eastern vocals, strange trippy textures and more turbo-charged rock riffage, it's one of the band’s best LP openers of all time and has aged well – it still kicks off when they perform it live.
7. Warrior's Dance
Comebacks don’t come any harder or heavier than the band’s fifth album Invaders Must Die. Five years after Always Outnumbered, they finally returned to outgun us all with an album that still plays one of the strongest roles in their live set to this day. They broke their prolonged silence in December 2008 with Warrior's Dance, a rattling breaks banger that samples the vocals of True Faith’s 1989 classic Take Me Away. The message was clear: The Prodigy are back and kicking serious ass again.
8. Stand Up
Powered by a feel-good Manfred Mann sample, the horns and big swing vibe of Stand Up remind us The Prodigy aren’t just about eye-popping rave energy or punk fury – they know how to bring the funk home, too. The best album closer the band have made to date, it also inspired a superb Public Enemy mash-up that began life as an unofficial bootleg but impressed Liam Howlett so much he legitimised it and included it on the deluxe version of The Day Is My Enemy album.
9. Wild Frontier
While they remained dominant as festival headliners, it would be another six years until The Prodigy released another album. With its heaviest proportion of Keith-fronted tracks in the band’s then-24-year history, The Day Is My Enemy boasted a barbed punk edge. But it’s moments like the rush-caked Wild Frontier that really brought all their musical motifs together – spine-tingling synths, white knuckle energy, slamming breaks and a powerful rocky vocal. The Killsonik remix packs a serious punch, too…
10. Light Up The Sky
There are many great tracks on The Prodigy's latest opus No Tourists, but the epic Light Up The Sky might be the stand-out. Its screaming guitar samples and rocky grunt take us back to Fat Of The Land, the warped detuned synths and acid lines are a direct link back to Music For The Jilted Generation, and the pitched up vocal doffs its cap to Experience. Like most of the album, it feels like a combination of everything we love The Prodigy for – but with 2018 level production beef.