Right in the middle of the Britpop years, we finally get a proper punk number one!
Firestarter, by The Prodigy (their 1st of two #1s)
3 weeks, from 24th March – 14th April 1996
Obviously ‘Firestarter’ is not musically ‘punk’ – more techno-metal – but everything else is pretty on point. The aggression, the repetitive, nuclear siren riff, the nastiness of the lyrics: I’m the bitch you hated, Filth infatuated, Yeah…
Within the song’s opening ten seconds, it is already one of the grittiest sounding number one singles we’ve heard. Everything about it seems designed to put you on edge, to make your hairs stand on end – the harsh drums and bass, the abrasive riff, the metal on metal grinding rhythm. It’s not often a song this raw, this unapologetically hardcore, crosses over into huge mainstream success.
I was ten when this came out, but I remember it feeling and sounding dangerous. I’m the Firestarter, Twisted Firestarter… I’m pretty sure it made the evening news, amid fears around the arson-promoting lyrics and Keith Flint’s performance in the video, in which he flings himself about an abandoned tunnel, covered in piercings, with his memorable reverse-Mohican hairdo. Watching it now, it’s amazing to think that many stations refused to play it before the watershed – there’s no violence, no swearing, nothing sexual; just Flint’s unhinged performance. But, to be fair, it is terrifying, especially when he pauses to stare, dead-eyed into the camera (and perhaps quite poignant, now, knowing that he had his demons).
The Prodigy were already a hugely successful dance act, and had been scoring Top 10 hits since the early nineties. So the lead single from their third album was bound to be big. But ‘Firestarter’ was almost a reinvention – a heavier, rockier sound, presumably brought about by the fact that guitars were ‘in’ in 1996. Which brings us back to the troubles we’ve had in defining ‘Britpop’ recently: Prodigy weren’t Britpop – they were a dance act that pre-dated the genre – but it’s hard to argue ‘Firestarter’ and the subsequent ‘The Fat of the Land’ album weren’t huge Britpop moments.
We do have to acknowledge that much of this song is a patchwork of samples: from the Breeders, and a Chicago house group called ‘Ten City’. Even the ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ refrain is from Art of Noise. But if ever there were an argument against sampling being lazy, it is in a banger like this, the fact that the band heard something in those three wildly disparate songs and creating something fearlessly new.
And yet, I will say that, as great and thrilling as ‘Firestarter’ is, it’s neither The Prodigy’s best single, nor their most controversial. Their best will also make #1 before the end of 1996, while their most controversial was the 3rd release from ‘The Fat of the Land’, the ever-charming ‘Smack My Bitch Up’.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
For many of us Gen X this song and Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ define a generation. Loved Prodigy’s next no.1 too, and the two tunes that followed this one to the top, 96 was a far better year than 95 for chart toppers, maybe the last ‘ever great’ year with at least half a dozen all time classics
Yeah I think I prefer the second #1, though both are classics. The next two chart-toppers are good too… Next three even, lest we forget Ms G.
I think that seeing this get to No 1 started to convince me that I was really getting old (and yes, there were the Outhere Brothers before this). I know a lot of people felt positive about this record, and not only that but my wife says that one member of the Prodigy (don’t know which) was the son of her head of music, now retired, at one of the schools she taught at. But I could never see any merit in this myself, I always hated it and time has done nothing to change my mind. As ever I read and enjoyed your commentary with interest, impeccably researched and delivered as ever, but…they say we all turn into our parents one day!
That’s how I felt about all the X Factor winners and Westlife number ones, I was in my late 20’s when Firestarter hit and early 40’s at the height of the reality TV and mum pop epidemic. Probably a generational thing, I remember my parents began disliking a lot of chart music around the time of Adam Ant and Boy George and they would have been the age then I was when Westlife were riding high
I was at the other end of the scale – too young to really ‘get’ it. I just remember the video and being slightly scared of the manic, mohawked man bouncing around. I’ve found quite a few of the number ones from the early-mid nineties a bit middle of the road, so it’s nice to meet something genuinely youthful, something that would get your granny’s knickers in a twist!
I was err, 38, when this came out and it was an “oh my word!” moment. I loved it, so exciting, so menacing, I recall banging on about it at work to younger friends and rushing out to buy it. Big beats, great video and performance, for me this was an original – Breathe was good too, but more of the same, rather than a WTF moment. Smack My B Up I didn’t get to hear as it was banned on daytime radio, and when I did hear it the once or twice I wasn’t too fussed. In the 2010’s I went to danceclub Duckie in Vauxhall one Saturday night, they play cool oldies and not so oldies and Smack came on, people giving it some large in the small venue, and I watched admiringly as an older (than me) chap with a walking stick navigated gyrating people to the bottom of a small flight of stairs with one beer in hand and stick in the other. I decided I wanted to be clubbing when I’m 100, just to be make a point 🙂 I’m 66 and off to Duckie next saturday for a ska-themed evening. Pork-pie hat not obligatory…..
Yes! Well apparently kids don’t go out anymore, so mid-sixties will soon be the average clubbing age!
There’s nothing much to ‘Smack my Bitch Up’ – two lines repeated over and over. It was all about the video, I think, which is admittedly quite clever.
I heard this a lot growing up but I now associate it with the cover that Torre Florim did. It was used in a trailer for a video game that I was excited for. For some reason it always stuck with me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkfhL4SC91M
That’s a cool cover. I love complete reinventions of famous songs. Never heard it – might use it in one of my ‘covers of number ones’ posts in the future : )
I just can’t get this one or lock in…I liked the odd intro but after that it looses me. Hell I was still in my 20s at the time…but I don’t see me liking it then either if I would have heard it.