About
Never Touch That Switch was written and produced by Kelvin Andrews and Danny Spencer of Soul Mekanik. Originally featured on their 2005 album Eighty One, it was re-recorded with Robbie Williams’s vocals for Rudebox. The song’s futuristic pulse and cryptic refrain, “There’s a schism in the time mechanism,” typify the duo’s retro-electro style and Williams’s fascination with electronic experimentation.
Williams said the track reminded him of “pre-narcotics and pro-stealing your mum’s lino,” referring to his youth before fame. He described its meaning as open to interpretation but hinted that it was “about never opening your system to the mood-altering experience—you don’t know what it can do to you.” The lyric’s mechanical imagery mirrors this tension between curiosity and control, blurring the line between technology, temptation and self-destruction.
His heavily processed vocal adds to the disorienting mood, creating a robotic detachment that contrasts sharply with the humour of other Rudebox tracks. Though never released as a single, Never Touch That Switch has become emblematic of the album’s experimental streak and of Williams’s willingness to challenge his pop persona with something stranger, darker and more avant-garde.
Lyrics
In the vessel there's a switch in the middle
You really shouldn't fiddle cause its toxic
Listen up 'cos it's a red light
And the pressure's blowing up tight
There's a schism in the time mechanism
There's a schism in the time mechanism
Never touch that switch
Even if you want to
You don't know what it can do
Never touch that switch, even if you want to
You don't know what it can do
See the futures in the distance
I know I'm facing some resistance
Getting back within the blink of a bubble
Time machine never gives us any trouble
There's a riot down in Shelton
Only minutes after Brixton but this city never made it on the telly
Or the rumble of the nations underbelly
Never touch that switch, even if you want to
You don't know what it can do
Never touch that switch, even if you want to
You don't know what it can do
You know you're heading for a meltdown, and you're living in a tin town
Thinking that you're gonna be somebody, living in the land of milk and honey
Listen up 'cos it's a red light, and the futures blowing up tight
There's a schism in the time mechanism, there's a schism in the time mechanism
Never touch that switch, even if you want to
Credits
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Vocalist
Robbie Williams -
Songwriter
Kelvin Andrews, Danny Spencer -
Original Artist
Soul Mekanik