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Discography

Music For The Jilted Generation

Second album, first number one. 'Music For The Jilted Generation', released by XL Recordings in '94, got the top album spot in the UK and ended up selling 600,000 copies which deemed it certified platinum.

Music For The Jilted Generation
UK chart position: 1

Music for the Jilted Generation is the second studio album by The Prodigy. The album was released through XL Recordings in July 1994. The album was re-released in 2008 as More Music for the Jilted Generation, including remastered and bonus tracks. Similarly to their previous record Experience, Maxim Reality is the only group member, besides Liam Howlett, from the then line-up to contribute to the album.

When Liam Howlett came to the cutting room for the final phase in the album production he realised that all the tracks he had originally planned for wouldn't fit onto a CD, so "One Love" had to be edited which resulted in a cut of approximately 1 minute and 41 seconds, "The Heat (The Energy)" was slightly cut, and the track called "We Eat Rhythm" was left out. "We Eat Rhythm" was later released on a free cassette with in October 1994 Select Magazine entitled Select Future Tracks. Liam Howlett later asserted that he felt the edit of "One Love" and "Full Throttle" could have been dropped from the track listing.

The album is largely a response to the corruption of the rave scene in Britain by its mainstream status as well as Great Britain's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which criminalised raves and parts of rave culture. This is exemplified in the song "Their Law" with the spoken word intro and the predominant lyric, the "Fuck 'em and their law" sample.

Liam Howlett later said he regretted the choice of album title. He also claimed it was never meant to be political, but with a track sampling speech saying "fuck 'em and their law", that's quite hard to believe.

There was two proposed titles for this second album that never got used. They were Music For The Cool Young Juvenile and Music For Joyriders.

What is actually the Narcotic Suite?

You may not know what Liam thought of when he was writing them. Here is a quote from him: ”All of those tracks came from images in my head. For 3 Kilos, I pictured a load of laid back people lying around in a smoky room; Skylined had an uplifting, rush feel to it; and Claustrophobic Sting was a paranoid, depths-of-hell track, probably the most forbidding music I’ve ever written.”

"The Narcotic Suite" includes live flute parts, played by Phil Bent. Originally, Howlett asked Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull to play this part or to give permission to use samples of one of his flute parts; according to Anderson, the letter from Howlett got stuck in his office and when Ian found it, the album was already released.

Critical reception

Music for the Jilted Generation has received critical acclaim. Rolling Stone gave it three-and-a-half stars, calling it "truly trippy" and that it "generates universal dance fever". Alternative Press said it "throws much darker shapes than its predecessor" and "slams harder and rawer and covers more ground". Robert Christgau called it "one of the rare records that's damn near everything you want cheap music to be". Mojo ranked it number 83 in their "100 Modern Classics" list.

Spin ranked it number 60 in their "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s" list. NME ranked it number 9 in their "Top 50 Albums of 1994" list. On 4 December 2008, radio presenter Zane Lowe inducted it into his 'masterpieces' by playing the album in full on his BBC Radio 1 show. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 1994. It is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Liam about Music for the Jilted Generation

With Jilted Generation, I basically just wanted to forget about all the formulas of the dance music. In the dance you've got lots of different categories: jungle, techno, whatever. And each category has their rules, as it were, like you should use certain sounds, you shouldn't use guitars, you shouldn't use slow beats, all this crap. I just threw that out the window. I thought, "No, I really don't care about whether people slag this record off or not. I'm just gonna write something how I want to say it. " And that's what I did. And that's basically what came out.

For me there's still tracks there I wasn't happy with. I wasn't happy to put the more techno tracks on there like "Full Throttle" and "One Love" and stuff like that. It took quite a long time to produce the album. And I felt that it was sort of an end to something we were doing before and the start of something new. It wasn't just a whole new album with all new direction. It was important to still have some tracks that the old Prodigy fans could relate to still, you know? So with tracks like "Their Law" which were a bit more extreme and "Poison" and stuff like that, it was kind of like a new direction and "Voodoo People" and stuff like that. It was like forget about all the rules of dance music and here's something new that sort of captures something along with the rock side as well, just bringing that through a bit. We didn't want to change into a rock band. I think about the same time as we left the rave scene, we started to play like festivals and college dates and stuff, just stuff with other bands, guitar bands. And just being around that environment just inspired me to harden up the sound. It was the environment I was in.
- Liam Howlett

There was also a special Jilted Day on Dazed Digital when Jilted turned 20. Check it out with articles including a Q&A with Liam Howlett, an exclusive playlist selected by The Prodigy, an interview with Sewart Haygarth and Les Edwards the men behind The Prodigy’s most iconic album sleeve and more.
You can check out all the content here: http://www.dazeddigital.com/tag/jilted-day

Related articles

| Mix Mag
10 iconic The Prodigy moments

| MusicTech magazine
Prodigy engineer/co-producer Neil Mclellan remembers the Jilted Generation sessions

| Kerrang!
Death Threats And Dance Moves: Saluting 25 Years Of The Prodigy’s Music For The Jilted Generation

| DJ Mag
Solid Gold: How 'Music For The Jilted Generation' turned The Prodigy from rave outsiders to festival headliners

| The Quietus
The Prodigy Talk To The Quietus About Experience And Jilted Generation

| BPM
Prodigy Unauthorized

| Spin Magazine
The 90 greatest albums of the 90's

| The Face
The Future Sound of Essex

| Select
Fact! Jilted sculpture

| Rumba
Musiikkia hylätylle käsilaukulle - The Prodigy: Music for the Jilted Generation (XL)

| Mix Mag
Guitar Hero

Reviews in the press

|
The Prodigy Music for the Jilted Generation (Mute)

| Rockin' On
Music for the Jilted Generation japanise review

| Select
Essexpress!

See also

What Evil Lurks EP

What Evil Lurks

1991

Charly Single

Charly

1991

Everybody In The Place Single

Everybody In The Place

1991

Fire Single

Fire

1992

Experience Album

Experience

1992

Out of Space Single

Out of Space

1992

WInd It Up Single

WInd It Up

1993

One Love Single

One Love

1993

No Good (Start The Dance) Single

No Good (Start The Dance)

1994

Voodoo People Single

Voodoo People

1994

Poison Single

Poison

1995

Firestarter Single

Firestarter

1996

Breathe Single

Breathe

1996

The Fat Of The Land Album

The Fat Of The Land

1997

Smack My Bitch Up Single

Smack My Bitch Up

1997

Prodigy Present: The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One Compilation

Prodigy Present: The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One

1999

The Prodigy Experience - Expanded: Remixes & B-sides Compilation

The Prodigy Experience - Expanded: Remixes & B-sides

2001

Baby's Got A Temper EP

Baby's Got A Temper

2002

Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned Album

Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned

2004

Girls Single

Girls

2004

Hotride Single

Hotride

2004

Spitfire Single

Spitfire

2005

Their Law: The Singles 1990–2005 Compilation

Their Law: The Singles 1990–2005

2005

Voodoo People / Out Of Space Single

Voodoo People / Out Of Space

2005

Back To Mine Compilation

Back To Mine

2006

More Music For The Jilted Generation Compilation

More Music For The Jilted Generation

2008

Invaders Must Die Album

Invaders Must Die

2009

Omen Single

Omen

2009

Warrior's Dance Single

Warrior's Dance

2009

Take Me To The Hospital Single

Take Me To The Hospital

2009

Invaders Must Die EP EP

Invaders Must Die EP

2009

The Added Fat EP EP

The Added Fat EP

2012

Nasty Single

Nasty

2015

Wild Frontier Single

Wild Frontier

2015

The Day Is My Enemy Album

The Day Is My Enemy

2015

Ibiza Single

Ibiza

2015

The Night Is My Friend EP EP

The Night Is My Friend EP

2015

Need Some1 Single

Need Some1

2018

No Tourists Album

No Tourists

2018

Light Up The Sky Single

Light Up The Sky

2018

The Fat Of The Land 25th Anniversary - Remixes EP

The Fat Of The Land 25th Anniversary - Remixes

2023

World's on Fire Compilation

World's on Fire

2011

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The Prodigy 34 pcs sticker set

Huge set of The Prodigy stickers. 17 different designs (2 of each) and total of 34 stickers. Sticker sizes vary from 7 cm to 3,5 cm. Order here >