What would you say to the idea that a group of young musicians from the Forest of Dean in the UK could form a band in 1989 and then hit number one in the US with their debut single little more than a year later?
Unbelievable? You would have thought so, but that would be to reckon without EMF, and their song of that very name.
EMF hailed from Cinderford, in Gloucestershire, and originally featured James Atkin on vocals, Zac Foley on bass, Derry Brownson on keyboards/sampling and Mark Decloedt on drums. They loved New Order – EMF stands for Epsom Mad Funkers, the name of an ‘80s New Order fanclub – but were struggling to find their way.
Article continues belowThat was until the arrival of guitarist Ian Dench, who’d dropped out of Oxford University and was lacking a bit of direction himself. But then he met Atkin, who realised that Dench could be the missing piece of the EMF puzzle.
“I worked in a music shop and had got to know Ian,” Atkin told The Guardian in 2022. “He was a bit older, part of the Gloucester scene, and had experience of writing songs in bands.”
It sounds like that experience was required, too: “They had the name – EMF – but no songs, so I said: ‘We’d better write some,’” recalled Dench.
Which brings us to Unbelievable, a song that came to Dench while he was cycling.
“One day, I was riding my bike home, still obsessed with this girl who had dumped me, and the idea just came to me: ‘The things you say / Your purple prose just gives you away / The things you say / You’re unbelievable.’”
And there it is, that killer chorus, but it really wouldn’t have meant much without Unbelievable’s central hook, the monster guitar riff that comes next. Coming off like a funky foreshadowing of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, which would be released a year later, it still sounds enormous.
Discussing its composition, Dench says: “My dad was a classical guitarist, so I’d learned classical guitar and also loved the blues. The guitar riff goes from blues mode to flamenco mode, like the two conflicting sides of my life.”
Next up, the vocals, which sound youthfully naive, to say the least. “I was really inexperienced, and on the original four-track demo, my vocals are even more camp and throwaway than on the single,” Atkin remembers.
What of that vocal sample, though – the ‘oh!’ that comes in at the start of the song and reappears throughout. That came from a recording of controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay, which was released by Def Jam. Dench says that they were struggling to get in touch with anyone at the label who could help them get it cleared, but in the end, got the go-ahead thanks to an unlikely meeting with one of the big bosses.
“We were flown out to Los Angeles to meet EMI and I happened to see Rick Rubin, the founder of Def Jam, sitting in the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset,” he remembers. “I asked if he’d clear the sample, he said: ‘Fax my office in the morning’ and he did it for free.”
Unbelievable was released in October 1990, and surpassed all expectations. “We thought it would be a taster single to set the scene, but when it came out, it went crazy,” Dench told PRS for Music in 2025.
It certainly helped that EMF managed to capture the musical spirit of the times, which involved a collision of styles and cultures.
“The scene was full of guitar music, but then there was also the weight of hip-hop alongside electronic synths which seemed very punk,” says Dench. “Bands like the Happy Mondays and Jesus Jones were mixing things up – it was so exciting.
‘I always thought there must be some way to put these styles together. Being unafraid to combine them was partly due to this arrogance of youth. You don’t know any better – you’re just striving to be as creative as possible.”
Unbelievable was produced by Ralph Jezzard, who sadly died last year, and he was also a key player in EMF’s subsequent album, Schubert Dip. “Ralph went on to become like a band member,” says Dench. “Sadly, he died a few months ago. No one could quite capture our sound like he could.”
Although nothing else on the album could match Unbelievable, the record was a success, and EMF were rubbing shoulders with music industry royalty. They even performed an unlikely duet with Tom Jones in 1992.
Jones, it seems is a big fan fan of the song: he’s since included it in his solo set, and there was also the strange spectacle of him singing it alongside will.i.am, the Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson and Rita Ora when they were all judges on the UK version of The Voice.
“It’s hard to cover because it’s such a slow tempo,” Atkin told The Guardian. “I nearly choked on my cup of tea when I saw will.i.am trying to do my rap.”
EMF released two more albums after Schubert Dip – Dench once joked that, as well as being a confectionary pun, the title referred to the fact he liked to ‘dip’ into composer Franz Schubert’s back catalogue when he had writer’s block – but then went on hiatus in 1995. There have been various reunions since, but it was only in 2022 that the band released another full album of original material.
Dench became a successful songwriter for other artists in the intervening years – he was one of the writers of Beyoncé and Shakira’s Beautiful Liar, which gave him a UK No 1 in 2007 (Unbelievable only reached 3 in Britain) – while Atkin retrained as a secondary school teacher. Zac Foley died in 2002, but EMF released another new album in 2024, and they continue to tour.
‘When we perform live now, we play our new music but also our hits,” Dench told PRS for Music. “Every time we play Unbelievable, the place goes wild. It’s such a joyful celebration of the band and our music.”
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