2 Unlimited, ‘No Limit’: No Lyrics, No Problem

2 Unlimited
‘No Limit’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on February 7, 1993

1. No no

“The lyrics aren’t supposed to mean that much
They’re just a vehicle for a lovely voice”
”An Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter”—Mansun

When Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger wrote about this song, he described a memory of seeing former NME hack Tony Parsons on TV, reading aloud the lyrics of 2 Unlimited’s biggest hit “in a tone of profound regret.”

I can’t find footage of this event (which I did not see) nor the Spitting Image parody that changes the words to “There’s no lyrics!” (I did see that one.) The closest thing I can find is this clip of Dylan Moran having a go at Fatboy Slim’s “Rockefeller Skank”:

This was a common opinion at the time, and some people were genuinely kind of furious about “No Limit”, which seemed like a parody of lyric-writing, a Eurovision wannabe that somehow became a chart-topper, and proof that civilization was on the brink of collapse.

In hindsight, getting mad about 2 Unlimited was very silly. Complaining about the lyrics of “No Limit” is like complaining because your wanted your Big Mac served medium-rare. They haven’t made a mistake—you’ve just missing the point.

And I admit that I was very much one of the point-missers. Songs like “No Limit” sent me into a rage because they defied something I had come to believe with a religious passion:

Lyrics are the most important part of music.

2. No no no no

Sometimes, I have to force myself to listen to the whole of a song. My attention latches onto the vocals that everything sounds a capella on the first listen. I heard a SZA song the other day, and I couldn’t hum the melody but I know that one of the lyrics is: “Hurry now, baby, stick it in/Before the memories get to kickin’ in.”

In my early teènage years, I had a big overlap between books and music. I was reading lots of sci-fi and fantasy at the time, so I felt drawn to lyrics in the same genre. Queen were great for fantasy vibes (Queen II is the novel that Tolkien wished he could right) while Bowie provided futuristic space thrills, especially on Diamond Dogs, which is the soundtrack to an abandoned musical adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

But I think the first time I felt the power of lyrics as a way to describe the messy emotions of life here on earth was around 1993, probably the time I first heard Pearl Jam’s Vs.

From that moment on, I was on a mission to find the richest, deepest lyrics I could, and I was lucky/unlucky enough to discover the likes of Leonard Cohen, The Cure, Public Enemy, The Smiths, and—my poison of choice— Manic Street Preachers. Lots of poring over liner notes; lots of copying out lyrics in long-hand.

If you’re a lyric person, you’re probably already rushing to the comments to tell me about the records that you can quote verbatim. This is a common experience.

Sadly, there’s an embarrassing flipside to all this: the sense of cultural superiority over people who felt genuine emotions at songs with cringey lyrics, or even songs with no lyrics at all.

Personally, I didn’t feel superior. I just felt sad. Music felt like this secret garden that I had discovered all by myself. It was hard to be alone in there, and it was hard to think about everyone trapped in their boring world of bland song lyrics. The kind of sadness, perhaps, that evangelicals feel when thinking about the unsaved.

It felt greedy, having these ripples of joy pass through my brain without being able to share them. I mean, everyone should be able to feel this joy, because everyone has the same kind of brain, right?

Right?

2. No no no no

A few years ago, Twitter decided that there were two types of people: “wordcels”, who are verbal thinkers; and “shape rotators”, who are primarily visuospatial thinkers. Wordcel is derived from the term “Incel”, and that’s way too complicated to unpack right now (but here’s an explanation by Max Read if you’re curious)

“Shape rotator” comes from the visuospatial questions on a standard IQ test, which often ask you to visualise a 3D shape from a different angle.

IQ tests examine a range of abilities, including verbal, visual, and logical skills. Your IQ is your combined score on all of these tests. This concept of IQ is based on the idea that all human brains are basically the same. If you’re really smart, you should be good at everything.

The Wordcel vs Shape-Rotator thing is interesting, because it asks: what if these are completely seperate qualities? What if people think in fundamentally different ways? What if there are different types of human brain?

The human brain comes in far more varieties than just verbal and visual. A recent New Yorker essay called “How Should We Think About Different Thinking Styles?” digs into the wide world of cognitive diversity, interviewing verbal and visuospatial thinkers, and those who fit into other categories. The author describes their own thought process like this:

My head isn’t entirely word-free; like many people, I occasionally talk to myself in an inner monologue. (Remember the milk! Ten more reps!) On the whole, though, silence reigns. Blankness, too: I see hardly any visual images, rarely picturing things, people, or places. Thinking happens as a kind of pressure behind my eyes, but I need to talk out loud in order to complete most of my thoughts.

(Worth noting that being a non-wordcel hasn’t hampered this author’s language skills—after all, they got published in The New Yorker.)

I always imagined that everyone’s mind worked in roughly the same way as mine. That everyone has an incessant inner monologue, talking talking talking without a pause for breath. Also, that when people say they can visualise something in detail, they’re exagerrating.

The fact that we have these different internal structures explains a lot, I think. It explains how we react to music: why some people dance, why some sing along, why some play air guitar, why some ignore it completely.

And why some people, like me, focus on the lyrics. Because certain lyrics echo my internal music.

4. There’s no limit

All that said, there’s a huge irony here:“No Limit” does have lyrics! Quite a lot of them!

Here is a sample:

No limits allowed, ’cause there’s much crowd
Microphone check as I choose my route
I’m playing on the road, I’ve got no fear
The south from my mouth is on record here
There never will be no mountain too high
Reach the top, touch the sky
They tried to diss me ’cause I sell out
I’m making techno and I am proud

Never heard these lyrics before? Blame (or possibly thank) Pete Waterman who took one listen to this and declared it to be “the worst rap I’ve ever heard”. All of Ray Slijngaard’s lyrics were cut from the UK single release, except for the word “techno”, which gets repeated over and over again.

Waterman understood something I didn’t, which is that some people might enjoy rich lyrics, but most people will enjoy a catchy beat. “No Limit” sold over 2 million copies, so I guess he was right.

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