Music for the Jilted Generation | ||||
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Studio album by The Prodigy | ||||
Released | 4 July 1994 | |||
Recorded | Earthbound Studios, The Strongroom | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 78:07 | |||
Label | ||||
Producer | ||||
The Prodigy chronology | ||||
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Singles from Music for the Jilted Generation | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | |
The Boston Phoenix | |
Christgau's Consumer Guide | A |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
The Guardian | |
NME | 9/10 |
Q | |
Record Collector | |
Rolling Stone | |
Select | 5/5 |
Music for the Jilted Generation is the second studio album by English electronic dance music band 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.
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. Many years later, after the controversy died down, Liam Howlett derided the title of the album, which he referred to as "stupid", and maintained that the album was never meant to be political in the first place.
Many of the samples featured on the album are sound clips from, or inspired by, movies. "Intro" features a sample that sounds like it's from the film The Lawnmower Man, however it is an American voice on "Intro" instead of Pierce Brosnan's English accent and the words are subtly different (on "Intro" the words are "So, I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands", but in "The Lawnmower Man" the line is "So I'm taking my work underground, I can't let it fall into the wrong hands again"). "Their Law" samples Smokey and the Bandit, "Full Throttle" features a reverse sample from the original Star Wars movie, and "The Heat (The Energy)" features a sample from Poltergeist III. In "Claustrophobic Sting", a voice whispers "My mind is glowing", similar to HAL 9000 saying "My mind is going" in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.