Derry Brownson was the co-founder and keyboard player of EMF, who had a huge hit all over the world with indie-dance anthem Unbelievable in 1991.

I would have guessed that EMF were one hit wonders, remembered only for that earworm Unbelievable. Unless you include their cringey cover of I’m A Believer with Reeves and Mortimer.

I certainly would not have been able to name another EMF song apart from Unbelievable. Nor would I have been able to name a single band member; and I never did know what their name* meant.

So I was nonplussed to read of the death of the band’s co-founder, keyboard player Derry Brownson. And unaware he was the second of the original line-up to go, following bass guitarist Zac Foley in 2002.

EMF came out of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire on that first wave of bands with a hybrid sound that blended guitar-based indie music with dance beats in the late Eighties.

Unbelievable reached No.3 in 1991 and, somewhat surprisingly, topped the Billboard singles chart in America – a rare feat for a British band at the time.

It’s irresistible, with a big guitar riff that switches between blues and flamenco, married to Mancunian rave elements, and a rap section to match their hip-hop fashion style.

Throw in a guitar solo, samples of both US comedian Andrew Dice Clay (“Oh!”) and black performance poet Gylan Kain, and that crucial pause in the chorus before Ian Atkin, with his rather fey vocal tone, yells out: “You’re unbelievable!” 

Contrary to my ignorance, EMF had other hits: despite seeming to contradict their first hit, follow-up single I Believe reached No.5, and they had five or six others in the Top 40, including that Monkees cover, which also reached No.3.

They disbanded in the mid-Nineties but have reunited at least three times since then and recorded a comeback album in 2022, with Brownson still an integral part of the lineup, joining them onstage a few months ago despite the brain tumour that would take his life.

It was a rather more prosaic way to go than his predecessor Zac Foley, who died of “misadventure” while celebrating New Year 2001: the pathologist finding high traces of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, barbiturates and alcohol in his blood.

*Oh and the band name came from a journalist: David Quantick having once described some New Order fans as “Epsom Mad Funkers.” Being big fans themselves, they adopted the name, though they told some journalists it stood for “Ecstasy Mother Fuckers.”