Keith Flint: Prodigy singer dies aged 49

This is news which we hate to report. Unfortunately, Keith Flint died, the Prodigy singer committed suicide. The vocalist was only 49 years old. The producer and leader of the band Liam Howlett: “Shocked and angry that he killed himself”. The face of nineties electronics was provocatively styled

The Prodigy singer was found dead at his home in Dunmow, Essex. The Daily Star reported the news. The official account of the British band on Instagram, managed by his colleague Liam Howlett, has spread the news that it is suicide: “I can not believe it, our brother Keith took his life on the weekend”, he wrote, sharing a photo of Keith.

If there is a face, an image that perfectly embodies the nineties in England – that mixture of punk, psychedelic, techno, dance and the remains of the youthful rebellion of the rave generation – is certainly that of Keith Flint, singer and dancer of the Prodigy, found dead this morning at his home in Essex. 

Keith Flint was born in Redbridge, London. As a kid he had moved to Braintree, Essex. Here, in 1990 the artistic adventure of The Prodigy opens. Flint was initially one of the two dancers of the group, and from 1996 began his career as a vocalist.

His death, just 49 years old, seems to be the seal on a musically revolutionary and overwhelming era, the one that brought a generation of new “non-musicians” to dominate the English and international scenes, with a music that was full of electronics and tension.

 

The Prodigy, like the Chemical Brothers, have contributed, to the transformation of electronic dance into a sound from large arenas. They made of their “big beat” a genre (with the not indifferent complicity of Fat Boy Slim), and for just under a decade they played explosive and innovative music, the “rock” of a new generation.

 

It was in the mid-nineties that Flint, after being a “dancer” for the band, took the role of front-man, when he sang Firestarter, with a look halfway between punk and horror, totally in contrast with the advent and the domination of the classifications by the boy bands of handsome boys and educated British formations.

 

The Prodigy are a different band from the others, they do not have a classical structure or even absolutely defined roles. Flint was the “poster boy”, the strongest and public image, but he was not the leader or the only front-man. His impact on stage was, however, devastating, powerful, very personal, and his presence, as well as his voice, contributed a lot to the success of the English training in the three most famous albums, Experience (1992) and above all the two masterpieces of the group, Music for the jilted generation (1994) and The fat of the land (1996).