The Truth Behind EMF’s 1990 Smash Hit ‘Unbelievable’
When your first single out of the gate is the evergreen smash “Unbelievable,” your life catapults out of control. This was EMF’s experience: five fun loving young guys who were having a good time when “Unbelievable” turned them into overnight sensations.
It was 1990. Guitarist and principal songwriter Ian Dench, vocalist James Atkin, keyboardist Derry Brownson, bassist Zac Foley, and drummer Mark Decloedt were spending as much time enjoying themselves in the U.K.’s Forest of Dean, where they’re from, as they were trying to write songs. Dench had the most experience making music, and “Unbelievable” came to him on a bike ride after being dumped.
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It was the time of American hip-hop, U.K. indie bands, ecstasy-fueled dancefloors, and sampling. All those elements came together in the perfect pop of “Unbelievable,” further refined under the production skills of Ralph Jezzard. The song resonated with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 on the U.K. charts.
The instantly recognizable sample of comedian Andrew Dice Clay’s “oh!” kicks off the genre-melting jam. Besides dominating radio, the song’s addictive chorus lends itself to film, television, trailers, and commercials to this day. It’s been covered numerous times, including by the supergroup of judges on The Voice UK, with Tom Jones and Rita Ora.
Ivor Novello winner and two-time Grammy nominee Dench unintentionally parlayed his skills into a songwriting career, co-penning hits like “Beautiful Liar” for Beyoncé and Shakira, and “Tattoo” for Jordin Sparks, among others. He also continues to flex his chops for EMF. This past January, the group released The Beauty and the Chaos, their fifth album. This month they play their first U.S. gigs, incredibly, since 1992, including a stop at Summerfest.
Ahead of these shows, Dench Zooms with me, and his teal headphones play nicely against his young daughter’s drawings taped up on the wall behind his head, making him look like he is on a children’s television program. Grabbing an acoustic guitar, he plays the riffs of “Unbelievable,” alternating between the song’s blues and Spanish strains.
“As I spent longer in the hit-making machine, I missed doing things because I loved them,” Dench says. “It wasn’t until we did the EMF 30th-anniversary shows and I started hanging out with James again and writing songs that I realized James and I had never done anything because we tried to write a hit or because of the business. It was always because we wanted to have fun and be in a cool band and make music to move people. It’s been amazing to do that again. The Beauty and the Chaos is the culmination of that.”
It’s All Lies
Ian Dench: All the songs I was writing were about a girl who dumped me. I was just humming, “Oh, you’re unbelievable,” and I thought that was a brilliant concept for somebody that’s dumped you. It was all about lies and can I believe her?
The guitar riff is an explanation of my musical life. I loved the Doors, and on the way up, that’s the blues bit of the riff. On the other hand, my whole life, I heard my dad playing Spanish classical guitar and my mum singing Spanish songs. That popped out of my head, just like that.
Andrew Dice Clay and Rick Rubin
There are two stories about the Andrew Dice Clay sample. We bumped into Rick Rubin at the Rainbow in Los Angeles. I went up and said, “Hi, we’re trying to get this sample cleared.” He’s like, “Fax my office, and I’ll clear it.’ And he did, which was lovely. The other story is, a couple of days before that, Andrew Dice Clay was at the Comedy Club. He had just got into a limo and Derry or Zac had run up thinking, “Yes! This is my moment!” and said to him, “We want to clear this sample. We love you!” He completely blew them off, probably thinking, “Who are these idiot kids?”
What the…?
There’s another urban myth about “Unbelievable” that it’s got “What the fuck” in it, and it doesn’t. It’s our own fault because we enjoyed promoting that fact. We took the “fuck” out because it wasn’t going to get played on the radio. But in the lyrics on the record, it says “fuck,” but it’s not actually on the record. The truth is, it’s our own fault for writing it in the lyrics. But on the actual recording, there is no swear word.
The Taster Single
“Unbelievable” was meant to be a taster single. It was the cool single to get magazines on board. Famously, we did Juke Box Jury, which was this TV program in the U.K. where experts would come on and vote on whether a song would be a hit. Robert Smith was one of the people. The panel voted that “Unbelievable” wouldn’t be a hit, whereas the audience voted it would be a hit. You just can’t tell whether something is going to connect. The people were ready for it.
Dirty Laundry
Autumn 1990, we went on a two-week tour supporting Adamski. At the end of the tour, just when “Unbelievable” was released, the record company was like, “You can’t go home. We need you in London to do interviews now.” We didn’t go back to the Forest of Dean. We went to London with a bag full of dirty laundry, stayed in a hotel, and did interviews, interviews, interviews, interviews.
Then the record company said they needed the next record really quickly and that we needed to finish the album. Recording, recording, recording. I didn’t go home for another six weeks. It was a sudden pressure. The commercial machine needed to be fed. I got shingles because I was exhausted. Then Zac got chicken pox. You could see the pressure was taking a physical toll.
Our manager sent the four of them on holiday to the Caribbean and told me, “You need to finish the record.”
Number 1
Summer 1991, we had a six-week tour of the States. We played Montreal, and as we drove across the border and down into Chicago, we heard the record went No 1. All the dates were already sold out. I’d never played 1,500-2000-capacity venues. I’d never been in a band that had headlined venues that size before. The craziest tour you can imagine.
The Grass Is Always Greener
In the U.K., the pop magazines loved us because we were five young, good-looking guys. Smash Hits kept putting us on the cover. It was weird for us because we thought we were doing something cool and edgy and all of a sudden, it was this pop hit. The States embraced us as an alternative band, and we loved that. Then the New Musical Express and the Melody Maker started getting interested. The big magazines of the time wanted to come on tour with us in the States and do photographs and interviews. It was great. Having conquered the States, we bought some of that American cool back with us.
In America, success is celebrated whereas in the U.K., there’s this “Oh, don’t get above your station” sort of thing. Being underground is celebrated. I can remember once supporting the Red House Painters with Whistler [Dench’s project after EMF]. California band playing in London at The Garage, and you could have heard a pin drop. We got to chatting backstage with [Mark Kozelek] and I said, “Oh, to have that sort of adoration.” And he said, “Oh, to have your sales.”
Best Sync Placements
I love the ones that take the essence of “Unbelievable” and give it a new interpretation. Every year for their “back to school” range, Target would take some classic song and do a really weird arrangement of it. They did this glockenspiel arrangement of “Unbelievable.” There’s all the great lyric rewrites, like Kraft “you’re crumb-believable” and Heinz “you’re un-bean-lievable.” Then there are really cool ones, like Calvin Klein, when Justin and Hailey Bieber are dancing amongst a bunch of other classic songs.
Early on, I remember us getting very nervous about letting “Unbelievable” be used for things. A friend of mine who manages very cool bands said, “Look, the song is already in the public domain. It’s just one of those things that’s permeated popular culture. You can’t control it.”
Cool Versus Popular
I’m frustrated with myself and us as a band that we even thought that pop meaning “popular” was a bad thing. We had a young female teen audience, and we wanted the cool guys to like us. Young guys just always want to be cool, and that’s a shame. Those young women have grown up to be amazing women. They’ve got families, and they come to our tours. I’m sort of angry at my young self, and at our young band, for even for a minute thinking that it was a bad thing that we were pop and lots of people liked us. When you connect with people in a way that’s so special, you need to embrace it and go with it.
Stars Aligning
It’s a weird thing when early in your career you write a song as big as “Unbelievable.” It sort of feels a little bit like it’s been downhill ever since.
Certainly as a band you can’t help thinking, ”We got to write another one.” To make a hit record, you need a great melody and a cool sound, but it also needs to speak to the moment and the artist and the way the record company set it up to connect with everything. It’s all got to be plugged in. There are so many things at work that are beyond your control. There was something about “Unbelievable” where the stars aligned.
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