Songfacts®:

• This song is about a girl who is "unbelievable" in the sense that she is very demanding and offers nothing in return - the singer feels he can do nothing right when he's around her.
• This uses a sample of raunchy comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay saying "Oh," followed on the album version by "What the f--k was that!" Clay also appears twice in the song saying, "It's unbelievable." These samples were taken from bits on his 1989 album Dice.
• EMF was led by their guitarist Ian Dench, who is also their primary songwriter, although the entire band was credited on this track. Dench was in a band called Apple Mosaic, who had a contract with Virgin Records but little impact. He formed EMF with some spirited young musicians from around England, and their first album, Schubert Dip, placed four songs in the UK Top 40, with "Unbelievable" peaking at #3 in November 1990.
  
  Six months later, the song broke out in America, where its quirky charm was embraced by pop radio and dance clubs looking for a new sound. Their US success was short lived, as they did little promotion in the country (their mainman Dench didn't even join them for their tour of the States in the summer of 1991), and after the #18 charting song "Lies," they weren't heard from Stateside again.
  
  The band members who did come to America apparently had a pretty good time; their keyboard player Derry Brownson and bass player Zac Foley were just 20 years old, and their hedonism on tour was a common topic in interviews. The band's follow-up album Stigma was a more somber affair, but did produce two more UK Top 40 hits. The band charted nine times in the UK Top 40 by 1995.
• On their only American tour, EMF played this multiple times at every show. It was the only song most of the audience had heard of.
• Tom Jones played this at some of his live shows, to the delight of the band. Jones performed the song with EMF on a British TV show where he told them about how he sang it in Vegas. According to the band, Jones got them really drunk that night.
• You might be able to guess the Top 3 soundtracks of the '00s: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 8 Mile and High School Musical. But you probably wouldn't come up with #4, the Coyote Ugly soundtrack, which sold over 4 million copies in America. The official theme song to the 2000 film is "Can't Fight The Moonlight" by LeAnn Rimes, but the motif is "Unbelievable," which plays in key moments throughout.
  
  The movie stars Piper Perabo as a singer-songwriter who becomes a dancing bartender to fund her dreams. The new songs in the film are augmented by danceable favorites, including "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "The Devil Went Down To Georgia."
• The CD single for this contains a song with no title, it only says "EMF live at the Bilson," and contained the lyric: "Ectasy Motherf--ker From us to you." This adds fuel to the rumor their name means Ecstasy Mother F--ker. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  chet - saratoga springs, NY