The Fat of the Land (1997)

The Fat of the Land is the third studio album by English electronic music group the Prodigy, released on 30 June 1997 through XL Recordings. The album received critical acclaim and topped the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. As of 2019 it has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, and is their best-selling album.

Background, artwork and album title

While Liam Howlett is generally responsible for the compositions and Maxim Reality is featured on two tracks, this is the first record to include contributions by Keith Flint. The Fat of the Land album cover featured an image of a moon crab and a new logo, dropping "The" and adding an ant silhouette. The photo of the crab was taken on the Playa Las Gemelas in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica. The album title comes from the old English phrase 'living off the fat of the land', which means living well or being wealthy.

After the release of single "Firestarter", Howlett joined a PlayStation league for dance musicians organized by Muzik reporter Martin James, who would become his friend and Prodigy's official biographer. Howlett's gaming habits ended up delaying the album for several months, with him eventually asking James to send games to Leeroy Thornhill instead to cut distractions, saying “The record label are on my back about the album and I can’t get on with it ‘cos I’m spending all my time on Tomb Raider.

Release

Released in the first week of July, the album hit number one on the Billboard chart on 19 July 1997. Certified double platinum on 2 December that year, it sold 2,600,000 copies in the United States.

In 1999, The Fat of the Land entered the Guinness World Records as the fastest-selling dance album in the UK. The album was also nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards, but lost to Radiohead's OK Computer.

Controversy

The National Organization for Women objected to the seeming misogyny of "Smack My Bitch Up", though the band maintains that its true interpretation is "doing anything intensely". Liam Howlett observed, "That record was for the fans. Only brainless people get some stupid message out of it ... I'm often misquoted. Some magazine said, 'Liam Howlett says his band are dangerous.' What I said was, 'For this band to survive, it has to be dangerous for us' ... I wasn't saying we were dangerous because we're firestarters and we have spiky hair."

Reception

The album has been featured in a number of music publication lists:

In 1998, Q readers voted The Fat of the Land the ninth greatest album of all time. In 2000, Q placed it at number 47 in its list of the 100 greatest British albums ever. It has also been ranked number 43 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime" list, and was included in their "90 Best Albums of the 1990s" and "50 Best Albums of 1997" lists.

Rolling Stone included it in their "Essential Recordings of the 90s" list.

Spin ranked it number 20 on their list of the "Top 20 Albums of the Year [1997]" list.

Melody Maker ranked it number 13 on their list of "Albums of the Year" for 1997 and number 29 in their 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.

NME ranked it number 17 in their 1997 Critics' Poll.

In 2000 it was voted number 269 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.

Heavy metal-focused magazine Metal Hammer included it in their 2020 list of the top 10 1997 albums, citing it as "the point at which rave culture collided with metal culture".

The album is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and was nominated for the 1997 Mercury Music Prize.