Jimmy Eat World cover of Prodigy Firestarter

After a dry spell of not releasing an album for three years, Jimmy Eat World produced two songs, Splash, Turn, Twist, an outtake from the album Bleed American, and an unlikely cover of Prodigy's Firestarter.

Firestarter is a 2004 EP by the band Jimmy Eat World. The track "Firestarter" was originally released on the Last Christmas (EP), while the other tracks have appeared on album releases. The titular track is a cover of The Prodigy's song of the same name.

Even thought this song is old by now, to my shock, I only heard this yesterday. I could not believe that this was the same song.

We were asked to be on a compilation that was put out in the U.K., Adkins says of the Prodigy cover. They invited different artists to do covers of different No. 1 hits.

There's two different ways you can approach a cover song. There is the karaoke version, where you get to pretend that you're in that band. And then there is where you try to give it a unique and new interpretation.
Jimmy Eat World felt that with Firestarter it would be a good opportunity to do the latter because none of them were familiar with the song when they decided to cover it. They just had the lyrics.

Indeed they did just that, because they made the once upbeat, catchy Firestarter, one of the most emo songs I have ever heard. It was so depressing that I almost gnawed off my wrists. I'm deeply shocked and not to mention disappointed in the fact that they didn't even know the song to start with. Tisk tisk..

M