Hey! Do you remember the international mega-hit song “Firestarter” by the Prodigy from 1996? It wasn’t my favorite track from that album (I still say “Breathe” is a more interesting song) but it sure was popular and made them a ton of money.
If you’d like to get in on a piece of that action for yourself, it’s pretty straightforward: first you just need a charismatic and interesting-looking singer1Who, by literally all accounts after his passing, was a really nice guy, a sewer to hang out in, and samples from a few songs.
Easiest to guess, especially if you’re a fan of The Venture Brothers, is the “Hey!” from Art of Noise’s “Close (to the Edit).” That’s a Tuesday Tune Two-Fer repeat, unfortunately. I’d hoped to include the drums from “Firestarter,” which are sampled from a remix of the song “Devotion” by Ten City, which I can’t find on Apple Music.
The biggest surprise to me, though, was that the other main sample in “Firestarter” was from a song I’d heard about a billion times by 1996, because I listened to Last Splash obsessively. It’s from “SOS” by the Breeders. Which I never noticed, and only learned just recently, over 20 years later.
I think we’ve all learned something important here today.