Firestarter

Released by XL on 18 March 1996 as the first single from The Fat of the Land, it was the Prodigy's first song with a full vocal. Howlett had recorded it as an instrumental and was thinking of adding a vocal sample, but Flint wanted to write his own lyric. Flint said the result sounded quite menacing and that the song is about stirring people up. Howlett recalled the session as a special moment. The song gave the band their first UK number one, for three weeks, and their first big international hit, reaching 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The credits include Kim Deal, since the looped wah-wah guitar riff is sampled from the Breeders' S.O.S. The drums come from a remix of Ten City's Devotion, and the shouted hey from Art of Noise's Close (to the Edit), which is why Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn, J. J. Jeczalik, Gary Langan and Paul Morley are credited too. Jim Davies played guitar. Walter Stern directed the black-and-white video in an abandoned Underground tunnel at Aldwych.

Reception and live

Melody Maker placed it second among the singles of 1996, and in 2020 the Guardian included it among the 100 greatest UK number ones, where Chal Ravens called it pure boiling animus, doused in petrol. Pitchfork heard Trent Reznor in a moment of self-aware humor. Pitchfork's Jesse Dorris wrote that it set off the major-label bidding that Madonna's Maverick won. The Prodigy played it at Brixton Academy on 20 December 1997, a version of 5:30 on the Their Law DVD. Jimmy Eat World, Gene Simmons, Sepultura and Papa Roach have covered it, and Weird Al Yankovic wrote a loose parody, Lousy Haircut.