Lately there's been a lot of insults between British bands, like Oasis against The Beatles. Now Prodigy and Chumbawamba are at it. Recently, Chumbawamba said that they had an idea from Prodigy's new single, "Smack My Bitch Up." Chumbawamba thought of a track called "Smack My Keith Up," as in Prodigy singer Keith Flint. Prodigy's Liam Howlett reacted, saying, "It's taken them 15 years to come up with that one piece of blank record. Any one of my cymbal patterns is more radical than their entire recorded output, which is basically just a waste of plastic."
"We don't actually have a song called "Smack My Keith Up," Chumbawamba's Dunstan Bruce responded. "It was just an idea, because Prodigy have a song called "Smack My Bitch Up." But I never felt they'd properly justified why they'd done it. Its a typical thing where a lot of groups, because they're really big, they can get away with anything. And we wouldn't be happy unless we were questioning things like that." Chumbawamba's Alice Nutter included, "The problem with the Prodigy album is that musically it sounds absolutely brilliant but if you scratch the surface, there's no real content. There's no real sort of depth of ideas, its all shock horror."
You might be able to hear more when Chumbawamba is on MTV's "120 Minutes" on Oct. 26. The band's latest hit, "Tubthumping," is at number ten on this week's Billboard singles chart.
Chumbawamba, Prodigy - October 23, 1997
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