“Smack My Bitch Up” by The Prodigy

"Smack My Bitch Up" comes off the Prodigy's third album, The Fat of the Land, and XL Recordings put it out in November 1997 as the album's third and last single. Liam Howlett produced and mixed it himself, and it's big beat at its most bruising: breakbeats heavy enough to dent the dancefloor, a sneering refrain lifted from the Ultramagnetic MCs' "Give the Drummer Some", and, out of nowhere, a keening alap from Shahin Badar that drags the whole thing somewhere stranger altogether. For the single, Howlett picked a DJ Hype remix to ride along with it.

The title alone was enough to start fights, and the video, with its scenes of drunken, drug-fuelled sexual assault and violence, poured on petrol. The noise never faded: a PRS for Music survey in 2010 named it the most controversial song ever, and Mixmag's readers, polled in 2013, put it at number three among the best dance records ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.