365 Days of Song Recommendations: July 15

Breathe — The Prodigy

Having no evidence to the contrary, I’m certain that the term “banger,” as in a really fucking great song, originated in November of 1996 when Essex’s The Prodigy (comprised of Maxim, Liam Howlett, and Keith Flint) released their career-defining album The Fat of the Land. (It might not be their best overall output, but it’s the one that came to define The Prodigy.) They’d been a niche-successful electronica project during the early 1990s, but it wasn’t until they punked up their binary code that they became an international juggernaut. Other than the rougher rock distortion, there’s also an extra sauce hip-hop smatter (see: “Diesel Power” featuring Kool Keith), but that’s neither here nor there. While popular radio artists began experimenting with electronica, The Prodigy pulled in the other genres, mostly loud ones, in order to turn the crafty bleeps and breakbeats found on the excellent Music for the Jilted Generation (the proto-banger “Voodoo People” teases their dynamic shift) into radio-friendly “bangers” — most notably “Breathe,” track #2 on The Fat of the Land.

Hell, maybe I coined the term “banger” — driving the winding stretch of road between my home and my high school, that tossed The Fat of the Land into my portable CD player with cassette adapter, cranked up “Breathe” and said, “NOW THAT’S A BANGER!”

And I definitely didn’t mean the Irish sausage. Who would say such a thing on a winding Pittsburgh road?

It’s possible of course that “banger” comes from “headbanging,” which became a thing in the 1980s because we had hair bands and brain damage. If we take it back even further, “bang” pops up in the mid 1500s as an onomatopoeic verb, describing the act of hitting something. T-Rex thanks the 1500s for its contribution to their discography.

It’s also a trodden bit of slang among hep cats and cool kids used to refer to sex or drugs. In the 1990s, (citation required) we used “bangin’” to refer to a tight dress on a hot girl. Maybe girls used the term as well, but I wasn’t one so I can’t corroborate… and just now my wife rolled her eyes when I asked her. I told her I’m doing an informal but hugely important etymological study, but that didn’t convince her I wasn’t being a moron.

Australians at some point in their history used the word to refer to a morning coat, which has nothing to do with the ante meridiem hours unless you like to get formal for your morning cup of coffee.

It’s not until 2013 when Miley Cyrus called an entire album, perhaps presumptuously, Bangerz that the term reaches sort of a mainstream crescendo. On another music blog, I found reference to the term being tossed about on an Australian music forum all the way back in 2004. Proof that I am not the only person to have gone down this rabbit hole.

But let’s come back to the stone cold fact that no one, to the Interwebs’ knowledge, had used the term “banger” to describe a 1.21-gigawatt foot-thumping, head-nodding, face-melting track before The Prodigy released “Breathe” in 1996. You cannot refute the evidence.

This, the second single from The Fat of the Land, tore up charts all across Europe. “Firestarter” had just become their first UK #1 single and international success. “Breathe” doubles down on everything that made “Firestarter” thump.

The track combines a Thin Lizzy drum break, the whip crack from The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” snarling and incomprehensible Keith Flint vocals (“Psychosomatic, addict, insane!”), and trippy synth to create a sinister melange of rock, rap, and electronica. There isn’t a battered soul among us that wouldn’t find reason to bob their head a bit after that first beat drops.

In other words, a proper fuckin’ banger.

Played loud enough “Breathe” might even raise the dead. (R.I.P. Keith Flint, you magnificent, deranged performance artist.)

This banger is the 196th song on the #365Songs playlist!