The Prodigy
On 28th September
1992, an Essex rave act released their debut album. Simply entitled
‘Experience’, the record would change the face of music in the UK, and create
a platform for the group to carve out a long and successful career, selling over
twenty million records along the way. Formed a mere year and a half prior to
the album’s release, the group had already started a new trend in UK chart music
with their debut single, ‘Charly’. A strong seller primarily because of the
underground popularity of the AA side track, ‘Your Love’, the single spawned a
legion of copycats and bandwagon jumpers that filled the UK charts.
However, as the group were to prove, nobody could quite recreate the flavour
and ingenuity of their sound. That group was ‘The Prodigy’, flagship act of the
rave era, and brainchild of composer and all-round music maestro, Liam Howlett.
After reeling off multiple hits from their debut album, including such classics as ‘Out of Space’ and ‘Wind It Up’, the group had been somewhat unkindly labelled as ‘toy-town techno’ by their critics. Keen to distance the group from this tag, Howlett quietly and anonymously released the white label ‘Earthbound I’. After generating a considerable buzz with the hypnotic track, Howlett came forward to claim credit for it, stunning many in the underground scene who had previously been critical of The Prodigy’s output. The track would eventually be renamed ‘One Love’ on its official release, a fore-runner of the group’s second album, ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’. Released in 1994, the album as a whole marked a new musical direction for The Prodigy: it was harder, more aggressive, and in particular, louder.
Despite the enduring popularity of the group, it wasn’t until the release of “Firestarter” in March 1996 that The Prodigy landed their first UK number one. Their tenth and probably most well known single, it marked yet another change in style by the group in advance of their new album, ‘The Fat of the Land’, which was released the following year. Incorporating both punk and rock elements into their music, the album featured extensive vocal work by dancer Keith Flint. Despite controversy over the album’s third single, ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, the album was nominated for both a Grammy Award and a Mercury Music Prize.
After a long period of seven years, The Prodigy released ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ in August 2004. Although credited to the group as a whole, only Howlett was present on the album. Whereas in ‘The Fat of the Land’, the vocals of Keith Flint had become the focal point, the album was something of a return to roots for the group. However, Flint and MC Maxim Reality were both back in the fold for the group’s 2008 hit, ‘Invaders Must Die’, which debuted at number one in the albums chart: their biggest success since ‘The Fat of the Land’, and their last album to date.
