The Prodigy showed that the huge success of their debut album was no fluke with 1994’s Music For The Jilted Generation. Their second record, which turns 30 this week, wasn’t just a landmark release for the Essex crew, it was an era-defining statement for British dance music, an album that merged the euphoria and exhilaration of rave culture with rock menace. The group’s debut – 1992’s Experience – had captured the dizzy thrills of an underground scene infiltrating the mainstream but …Jilted Generation was a record rooted in anger and frustration, and all the better for it.
Speaking to Melody Maker at the time, Prodigy supremo Liam Howlett said the record was a reaction to draconian laws implemented by John Major’s Conservative government, who had introduced measures to make raves illegal. “The Jilted Generation, it’s all the kids who’ve grown up on this supposedly corrupt dance music,” Howlett told Melody Maker in 1994. “The government are trying to make out the whole scene is bad, and they want to stop everyone going out and having a good time.
