Fifty Twelves Inches #42

Unbelievable – EMF (1990, Parlophone Records)

The twelve inch that is selected today belongs to my wife.  Something she is keen to point out when it is dragged out of the cupboard. This is because there are three copies of this record in the vinyl cupboard and so statistically speaking at least, this record was bound to appear in this series at some point.  We know its her copy because it has a tiny tear in the top left hand corner (caused by her cat – one assumes the cat was more of a Jesus Jones fan)

Anyway, this song being featured is probably no bad thing, ‘Unbelievable’ is a great record, unashamedly pop, infectiously catchy and when it first came out in 1990, a fifteen year old me thought it was one of the greatest things ever written. I remember having a picture of EMF taped inside my GCSE physics textbook (back in the days when you were allowed to decorate text books).  I used to sit next to a girl in physics, who I was slightly infatuated with and I think I must have asked out about twenty times in a single year when I was fourteen or fifteen.  

She said no every time by the way, and every time she said no, I shrugged and carried on talking about whatever we talked in physics class.  It certainly wasn’t physics though.  Our physics teacher was a rake like man called Watson, who knew his stuff but sadly for him and us, his stuff was delivered in long monotonous blasts. 

Anyway, a few years back when trawling through LinkedIn I stumbled across the girl from physics who in the thirty years since I last saw her (which was in 1993, at a mutual friends eighteenth birthday bash) had become a member of the Conservative Party, something she openly boasted about – there were pictures of her and Teresa May and her with Jeremy Hunt and had recently announced her engagement to a chap whose occupation is stated as ‘Hedge Fund Manager’.  I’m pretty sure he is wearing braces in the photo of the two of them. 

So I probably had a lucky escape, but if only she knew that in thirty years time the lad that sat next to her in physics and wrote her soppy notes on orange paper, would be in charge of the 715^th most popular Internet blog with the word Badger in the title, how different and better her life would have been.

None of this of course I told my daughter because she’d probably laugh at me and call me a loser.  What I did of course was tell her about how great EMF were when they first came to the worlds attention.  They were one of a select band of groups or artists that could find themselves on the front page of Smash Hits and the NME and that was very much their appeal.   EMF would have almost certainly have been massive on You Tube had that been a thing back in the very early nineties.

After ‘Unbelievable’ and the follow up single ‘I Believe’ both shot into the UK’s Top Five, EMF looked set to become one of the biggest bands of the planet, their debut album ‘Schubert’s Dip’ followed that and for a while they rode the hype. 

I Believe – EMF (1990, Parlophone Records)

In 1992, they released their second album, ‘Stigma’ which was a radical departure and very few people bought it and EMF’s time in the spotlight had faded.  Their third album, the excellent ‘Cha Cha Cha’ was a sort of return to form, but by then, their audience had moved on.

Perfect Day – EMF (1990, Parlophone Records)

The band split and new projects arrived, James Atkins, the singer with the band formed the big beat act Cooler and their techno rock track ‘Teknog’ was something of dancefloor smash when I was a student. But that is not on Songwhip or surprisingly You Tube so here is the follow up single,

Disco Sucks – Cooler (1997, Polydor Records),

Here is the no more than five words review

“Mums records are better”

And here to celebrate the new Taylor Swift album, which has made at least one eleven year old’s week, is a track from it

So Long London – Taylor Swift (2024, Republic Records), which to be fair is better than anything on the second EMF album.

Here in pale comparison is something by Been Stellar a band from New York who I like quite a lot.

Passing Judgment – Been Stellar (2024, Dirty Hit Records)