Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck

Album: Cleansing (1994)
Charted: 80
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Songfacts®:

  • One of the most popular tracks by Prong, the lyric to this song came to frontman Tommy Victor when he was riding in the subway. "It's one of those songs that comes from being in the moment," he told us. "That's what it's about: you want to enjoy what's going on right now instead of worrying about these things in the past or worrying about the future, really." (Here's the full Tommy Victor interview.)
  • The song juxtaposes the anodyne act of snapping your fingers with the brutal image of snapping your neck as a metaphor for extremes: either is fine as long as you're doing it mindfully and with passion.
  • This song owes a debt to a Canadian group called Front Line Assembly. When Tommy Victor worked as a soundman at the club CBGS's, patrons would sometimes give him tapes hoping he would play them. One of these tapes was a recording by Front Line Assembly that he later used as the musical basis for this track (although he made it much more metal). Victor says that the band knows all about this, and are cool with it.
  • One of Prong's forebears is the British band Killing Joke, and many of that group's trademark elements appear on this track, including percussive guitar, overtones, and a flange effect on the chorus.

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