About
Unbelievable – I so stunned like vegetable is a song by Chen Tianwen whose music video was released by MediaCorp Channel 5 on YouTube as promotional material to the second season of the Singaporean sitcom “Spouse For House”. Since its release in April 2015, it has garnered over 2 million views and has spawned remixes, cover versions and a dance cover.
Origin
The song “Unbelievable – I so stunned like vegetable” was sung by Chen Tianwen and its music video produced and released under Singapore’s MediaCorp Channel 5 on YouTube in order to promote the second season of “Spouse For House”. Tianwen’s look for the video was inspired by 70s Singaporean singer Huang Qing Yuan while the video’s visuals was fashioned after Chinese karaoke music videos [1]. The song and its music video was released by MediaCorp Channel 5 on April 14, 2015 through YouTube.
Upon the release of the music video, the video garnered popularity inside Singapore and began attracting international attention after TIME[2] and Huffington Post [3] ran articles about the song and its video two days after its release.
Spread
The music video’s spread can be credited to the coverage that was given to it by Singaporean news outlets as well as international news outlets. Community on Buzzfeed [4] also did an article about the music video through an article that featured ten tributes to “Unbelievable – I so stunned like vegetable”.
Three days after the video was released and went viral in Singapore and worldwide, Chen Tianwen became a guest performer at the Singapore Star Awards 2015 where he performed the song wearing an outfit that was exactly alike to what he wore to the music video and bringing plastic flowers exactly similar to what was featured in the music video
In the July 1, 2015 episode of “The Noose” (a satirical news program also under MediaCorp Channel 5), the closing scene of Pornsak Sukhumvit’s (a Thai character in the show) segment was interrupted when Chan Tianwen entered the studio looking exactly like he did in the music video and started singing to the song and leaving Pornsak shocked afterwards.
EDM Remix
Two days after the music video was released, FallenSuperheroSG (who is also behind the Yam Ah Mee club mix that was a part of Yam Ah Mee – Returning Officer Extraordinaire) released an EDM Remix of the song. Their EDM Remix of the song has garnered over 60,000 views as of October 2015.
Dance Cover
On October 21, 2015, a link submission titled How to dance to “Unbelievable – I so stunned like a vegetable” surfaced on r/LearnUselessTalents [5] and the link submission led to a dance cover of the song that was uploaded on vid.me by an anonymous user. The dance cover features what appears to be a middle-aged woman in a teal bathing suit, pigtails, a bandana scarf and leg warmers dancing in their bathroom to the song with seemingly fitting choreography.
The Artist
Born as Chai Tian Bian in Singapore on May 28, 1963, Chen Tianwen is a veteran Singaporean actor who started his career in many Mandarin dramas throughout the 1990s. He also played a key role in the Cannes Film Festival award-winning film “Ilo-Ilo” as well as in other notable Singaporean movies such as the the Ah Boys to Men trilogy (Ah Boys To Men, Ah Boys To Men 2 and Ah Boys To Men 3: Frogmen) The Lion Men and The Lion Men: Ultimate Showdown. He plays the role of Erik Kwek in the second season of Spouse For House which explains his involvement in the promoting the show’s second season through “Unbelievable – I so stunned like a vegetable” and “Sandcastles In My Heart”.
Notable Examples
Parodies
A few parodies of the song have been made ranging from a Mother’s Day parody called “Unconditional” to lip sync tributes (which make up most of the parody videos for the song).
Cover Versions
Cover versions of the song outnumber the parodies for it and the cover versions come in various genres such as an acoustic version, an accapella version and even a marching band version to name a few.
Remixes
Aside from FallenSuperheroSG’s EDM remix of the song, other remixes also exist – mostly in the form of mash-ups with Billboard hit singles
Search Interest
External References
fn1. mothership.sg – The creator of that un-un-un-un-unbelievable MV explains how someone can be stunned like vegetable
/ Posted on 4-14-2015
fn2. TIME– ‘I So Stunned Like Vegetable’ Could Become a Thing After This Video Posted on 4-16-2015
fn3. Huffington Post – This Music Video From Singapore Is Un Un Un Un Unbelievable / Posted on 4-16-2015
fn4. Community on Buzzfeed – So Stunned Like Vegetable: Ten Tributes To Chen Tianwen’s “Unbelievable”
/ Posted on 10-22-2015
fn5. reddit: r/LearnUselessTalents – How to dance to Unbelievable – I so stunned like a vegetable / Posted on 10-21-2015