No Limits (2 Unlimited album)

Background

2 Unlimited had limited success in 1992 with their debut album Get Ready!. It had produced four hit singles, but the album had not performed well commercially, peaking at just #37 in the UK Albums Chart. At the time, many Eurodance acts were able to produce hit singles but were unable to capitalize on this with a commercially successful album. 2 Unlimited, however, broke the mould.

At the end of 1992, 2 Unlimited were still only known amongst those who followed chart music at the time. With the first single released from this album, "No Limit", this changed. It went to number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in early February (competing with "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston), and spent five weeks there. This exposure led to them being parodied by the mainstream media with the television series Spitting Image parodying the track as "No Lyrics" due to its repetitive lyrical content. The second single from the album, "Tribal Dance", was released in May 1993, followed by this album soon afterwards.

Album name and artwork

Like all the studio albums by the band, the title of the album was a modification of the title of the lead single to be taken from it. The artwork for the UK cover was designed by Julian Barton and David Howells. As like all the 2 Unlimited releases, most other territories featured a different album cover to the UK edition of the album. Unlike their previous album in the UK, where many of the tracks featured on it were instrumental, the artwork to this album featured band members Ray and Anita on the front cover.

Writing and composition

For the debut album, most of the writing had been done by Wilde and de Coster, with some input from Ray Slijngaard and other featured writers. For No Limits!, both Ray and Anita had much more input into the song writing process compared to the previous album. Anita has writing credits on seven of the album's fourteen songs and Ray has writing credits on ten of them.

As their British record company PWL were dissatisfied with Ray Slijngaard's raps, the British version of this album replaced most of the raps with instrumental parts.

Critical reception

Despite its commercial success, at the time the album was panned by the critics, especially in the UK. In Smash Hits, reviewer Mark Frith described the album as an "across the board techno splurge" and stated that this album contained clues as to why the band were unpopular in "elite dance circles". In the review of the single "Maximum Overdrive", the magazine reiterated that the band were, "not hard or imaginative and they have no credibility in dance circles."

The AllMusic review stated that beyond "No Limit" and "Let the Beat Control Your Body", there was little to recommend this album. Toby Anstis stated in his review of "Faces" that he "thought the album sounded all the same". Nonetheless, the band won the Best Dance Act award in Smash Hits that year as well as the World Music Award for Benelux.

Retrospective reviews of this album and the band in general have been more favourable. Only three years after the band split, they were described in a Guinness World Records publication as "spectacular" with the sound of "No Limit" being compared to "the sound giant dinosaurs might make stomping on cities". Their entry then goes on to describe their choruses as "chant-worthy" and that the singles from this album "ravaged hearts and minds across the globe", ending with the statement that they "linger forever in the hearts of true music lovers".

Writing credits

The following personnel all have writing credits on this album.