YMMV / The Prodigy

• Broken Base: "Need Some1" from the No Tourists album. Was it one of the best Prodigy releases as it has the vibe from Music for the Jilted Generation? Or was it one of the worst as it sounds like it was made by fans?
  • Some groups of fans aren't real big on Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned despite its commercial success. The record came after a three-year drought of new Prodigy material, featured nothing from Flint or Maxim, took on a more experimental streak than previous albums, and many fans still cite the lead single "Hot Ride" as a contender for their least favorite song in the band's repertoire. Fan reception to the record has warmed up with hindsight though.
• Chorus-Only Song: Many of their songs will qualify. Examples: "Voodoo People", "Firestarter", "Smack My Bitch Up", "Omen".
• Creepy Awesome: You'd think Keith and Maxim were possessed the way they chant their vocals. Especially live, where Maxim wails like a banshee once he gets really pumped up.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics gave a very cold reception to "Baby's Got a Temper" and Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. Both works were very popular, both in sales and in the fanbase.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The video for "Smack My Bitch Up", shot from first-person POV. ^note  Quick synopsis: the video starts with the protagonist in the shower. Protagonist then gets dressed, is seen putting shaving foam on a razor and then washing the razor; sits on the john; finishes dressing, has a drink and does a couple of lines of coke, then heads out for a night on the town. Before hitting the bars, protagonist orders a greasy kebab to line the stomach, then takes a taxi to a downtown bar and has several vodkas in quick succession, along with a leer from a Dirty Old Man. Now drunk, protagonist sits down next to a cute girl and tries to kiss her, but is rejected, so stumbles down the stairs to the basement dancefloor (groping passing girls on the way) and dances. The dancing quickly turns violent, protagonist trashes the DJ's decks and is shoved off the dancefloor, stumbling to the (men's) men's toilet and puking into the sink. Protagonist then kicks open a toilet cubicle door and tries unsuccessfully to yank defecating punter off the throne, so takes adjoining cubicle, shuts the door, ties off and shoots up with (presumably) heroin. Now very drunk and high, dazed protagonist stumbles out of bar and into the street, only to throw up again. Protagonist then wanders London nighttime streets, shoving aside random strangers, then enters a strip club. After groping yet another random girl, protagonist buys a bottle of champagne and carouses with topless dancers (annoying one with even more groping) before watching a dancer do a striptease. When naked, the dancer (the first person in the video to find the protagonist attractive) drags the protagonist onstage and acquires some clothes before hauling the protagonist out of the club and into a car for some steamy making-out. On arrival back at protagonist's flat, dancer strips off her clothes and protagonist takes one more gratuitous trip to the john before joining the dancer on the bed for insanely hot sex. Then dancer leaves the room and protagonist sits up and looks at own reflection in mirror...and is revealed to be a skinny, naked, wasted-looking blonde girl. The two final shots are the dancer sauntering off down the hallway and the dazed blonde girl passing out on the bed.
• Ending Fatigue: While they were always critic's favorites up until the mid-2000s, the one criticism that tends to come up with the Prodigy's early stuff is that it tends to go on a bit. The album version of "Voodoo People" has an extended coda that makes it a good two minutes longer than the single edit.
  • From the next album, the ten-minute "Narayan." Old habits die hard.
• Epic Riff:
  • "Spitfire" gets by on one monstrous power chord. It kicks ass.
  • Most of the parts from "Girls".
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Oasis are surprisingly friendly with fans of The Prodigy. It helps that both Gallagher brothers are genuinely good friends with Liam Howlett (Liam Gallagher was actually Howlett's brother-in-law for a time), and they both individually paid their respects to Keith Flint when he passed away in 2019.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the Prodigy certainly isn't unpopular in the United States and their native Britain, the core of their fanbase exists in Russia of all places, which may explain why they frequently tour there.
• Growing the Beard: Music for the Jilted Generation is a major 180 from the bright, giddy sounds of Experience. Sometimes it's hard to believe it's the same group.
• I Am the Band: Despite first impressions, not Keith, who only actually sings on one of the first 4 albums. Until The Day Is My Enemy every album was produced by Liam alone with barely any input from Keith or Maxim except when they needed to sing.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: How the harsher critics took to 2009's Invaders Must Die and 2015's The Day Is My Enemy.
• Memetic Mutation: The continuously repeated line off of "Spitfire" has reached memetic status in the fanbase, thanks to numerous interpretations and variations of it. The most known is: "If I ate a box of matches they'd call me SHIT THAT FIRE!!!!".
• Narm Charm: Keith's lyrics are either Creepy Awesome or they're this. Especially on "Take Me to the Hospital."
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The video for "Breathe", featuring a derelict, decrepit building filled with cockroaches, centipies and unnattractive decor. And also the video for "Fire", with its extremely primitive and bizarre CGI animation.
  • The protagonist of "Firestarter" is presumably this personified. He describes himself as basically being everything that scares the listener.
• Sampled Up: "Firestarter" is based on two samples: one from "S.O.S." by The Breeders and the other one from "Close to the Edit" by The Art of Noise.
  • “Smack My Bitch Up” is significantly better known than Give The Drummer Some, the song by Ultramagnetic MC's that the eponymous refrain is sampled from.
  • This could be said for most of their songs.
  • Averted by "The Way It Is" being based on Michael Jackson's "Thriller", and "No Man Army"/"Smack My Bitch Up" using a guitar riff from Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade."
• Signature Song: "Firestarter" is probably their most famous (with "Smack My Bitch Up" being their most infamous). Funny story: the song is so associated with Keith Flint that at a bar he owned, there was a fireplace that he often lit up, and he'd make a patron put a coin in a jar if they made the obvious joke.
• Song Association:
  • If you were to play "You'll Be Under My Wheels" from Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned in a crowd, there's a 33/33/34 chance that anyone that recognizes it will know it from either The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift or Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
  • Fans of The Matrix might recognize "Mindfields" as one of the songs that plays when Neo meets Trinity for the first time at a club in the first film.
• Squick: The band appear to be performing in a sewer in the video for "Poison." So... is that really mud they get covered in? This was lampshaded on Beavis And Butthead, where Butthead surmised that the video was "a tribute to turds."

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