The Fat of the Land

XL released The Fat of the Land on 30 June 1997. It is the group’s third album, and the first to include Keith Flint as a contributor. Maxim is on two tracks. Howlett wrote the music. Leeroy Thornhill danced. The group was from Braintree in Essex. The Independent, on 10 July 1997, reported that the album had reached number one in the United States eight days after release, with the Spice Girls at number two, and that XL had asterisked the title Smack My Bitch Up on the American edition. On 1 August the same paper reported a number one in 22 countries. This was a rave act, on an independent dance label, suddenly holding the biggest album in two countries.

Howlett told the Independent he had set out to wreck that popularity. The new single was called Smack My Bitch Up. The sleeve carried a line from Hermann Göring, “Would you rather have butter than guns?” He said the line was obviously not a Nazi gesture, because Maxim and Leeroy are Black, and he said the title was irony for anyone who had thought Firestarter, their first British number one, was a song about lighting fires. “They’ve got to get the irony in the songs,” he said. A Beggars Banquet spokesman told the paper that if you knew Liam you would know he meant the sabotage. A man at number one is a poor narrator of his own plan to become smaller. The title did the damage anyway.

In December 1997 the Los Angeles Times quoted Janice Rocco, of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, calling the song “a dangerous and offensive message advocating violence against women,” and noting that the single was out on Madonna’s Maverick label, half-owned by Warner. The lyric is two lines. Variety reported that Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem rallied outside Time Warner, and that MTV then dropped the video it had been playing between 1 and 5 a.m. MTV said the late-night run had always been meant to last a week, and that the protest was not the reason. Wal-Mart pulled the album from 2,300 stores. Kmart pulled it from 2,100. The Independent had already reported that the American edition marked the title out, asterisks over the word the shops would not print.

The sleeve is a crab, photographed on Playa Las Gemelas in Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica. The logo drops the word The and adds an ant. The title is the old phrase about living well. The record was late for a smaller reason. After Firestarter, Howlett joined a PlayStation league for dance musicians that Martin James, a reporter at Muzik, had organised. James later wrote the group’s biography. Howlett’s Tomb Raider habit held the album up for months, until he asked James to send the games to Thornhill instead. He told James the label was on his back and he could not get on with the record. Wikipedia dates a Billboard number one to 19 July 1997, a double-platinum certification in the United States on 2 December that year, and a later American tally of 2.6 million copies. In 1999 the album entered Guinness World Records as the fastest-selling dance album in Britain. It was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys and lost to Radiohead’s OK Computer. By 2019 the worldwide figure Wikipedia cites is more than 10 million.

Firestarter and Breathe had carried a breakbeat rave into the pop chart without asking the chart’s permission. Smack My Bitch Up asked the same audience to shout a line Howlett insisted was a joke about intensity. NOW heard a joke about hitting a woman. Both descriptions are on paper, in his interview and in Rocco’s sentence. What belongs to the music, rather than to the scandal desk, is the path. An Essex producer on XL, the label that had put out the rave 12-inches and Experience, made a number-one album out of breaks and shouting. The week it went to number one, shops in America and a feminist organisation that did not care what a breakbeat had meant in a field in 1992 both got a vote. The record is still a break record. It stopped being only a rave record the morning the Spice Girls were underneath it.

Sources

• The Fat of the Land: XL, 30 June 1997, the British and American number ones, Firestarter, Smack My Bitch Up.
• The Independent, 1 August 1997: Howlett on wrecking the popularity, a number one in 22 countries, the Göring line, Firestarter, Maxim and Leeroy, the Beggars spokesman.
• The Independent, 10 July 1997: the US number one eight days after release, the Spice Girls at number two, the asterisked title.
• Los Angeles Times, 4 December 1997: Janice Rocco of NOW, and the Maverick single.
• Los Angeles Times, 6 December 1997: Wal-Mart and Kmart pulling the album.
• Variety: MTV dropping the video, the Friedan and Steinem rally, the two-line lyric, the 1–5 a.m. run.