Up to eleven

The volume knobs of Tufnel's Marshall amplifier went up to eleven

"Up to eleven" or "these go to eleven" is an idiom from popular culture which has come to refer to anything being exploited to its utmost abilities, or apparently exceeding them, such as a sound volume control. Similarly, the expression "turning it up to eleven" refers to the act of taking something to an extreme. In 2002 the phrase entered the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary with the definition "up to maximum volume."

Original scene from This is Spinal Tap

The phrase was coined in a scene from the 1984 mockumentary/rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap by the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene Nigel gives the rockumentary's director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out one in particular whose control knobs all have the highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers, whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10, believing that this numbering actually increases the volume of the amp ("It's one louder"). When Marty asks why the ten setting is not simply set to be louder, Nigel pauses, clearly confused, before responding, "These go to eleven".

The phrase has been acknowledged on IMDb, where the regular 10-stars film rating scale goes up to 11 on its This Is Spinal Tap page.

Other references in popular culture

• Red vs. Blue has an episode in season 8 entitled "This One Goes to Eleven", which shows one of the characters fighting with extreme prowess and strength.

• Michelle Branch uses the lyric "What we got feels so good / Like I'm climbing a stairway to heaven / And it turns me on / When we dial it up all the way to eleven" in the song "Loud Music (song)" from her upcoming album West Coast Time (2011).

• Audio Adrenaline uses the lyric "Crank to eleven" in "The Houseplant Song" on their 1999 album Underdog.

• Citizen King uses the lyrics "One foot in the hole/One foot gettin’ deeper/crank it to eleven/And blow another speaker" in their 1999 song "Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out)"

• The Magnetic Fields uses the lyric "There'll be time enough for sex and drugs in heaven / When our pheromones are turned up to eleven" in the song "There'll be time enough" from their album 69 Love Songs.

• Natasha Bedingfield uses the lyric "My heart is like a loudspeaker / That's always on eleven," in the 2010 song "Strip Me."

• Frank Black uses the lyric "Look up to heaven, yeah / And turn it up to eleven." in the song "Pray a Little Faster."

• Puscifer uses the lyric "'Bout to turn it up to eleven" multiple times in the song "Man Overboard", the first single off the 2011 album, "Conditions of My Parole".

• The volume on BBC iPlayer goes up to 11.

• In the Guitar Hero series of video games, the in-game volume controls for sound effects and music have a maximum value of 11.

• In the Doctor Who episode "The Lazarus Experiment", the Doctor increases a church organ's volume with his sonic screwdriver, stating he needs to turn it "up to eleven".

• In the film Toy Story 2 a closeup of Evil Emperor Zurg's death ray reveals that its maximum power setting is 11.

• This is Spinal Tap - Limited Marshall Amp Edition version of the movie comes with a working Marshall amplifier that goes to 11.

See also

• Loudest band in the world
• Loudness war
• Spinal Tap