You know, it’s a nice song, but this isn’t the year for guitar-driven ballads.” There’s always an expert at the record company. I want money to make a music video.” They went, “Nope. But I actually called up and set up a meeting and I said, “I think this song could be a hit. I never called the record company ever in my life.
Nobody really knew us that well yet.Įverywhere we played, we noticed when it came to that song, people would pay attention. It wasn’t on the radio, and it wasn’t a hit. Q: What did that record do for you? How did it change things?Ī: I remember I wrote Wicked Game, and I thought, “The last thing we probably need is another ballad.” They were always telling me, “You’re a good ballad singer, but write more rock ‘n’ roll stuff.” We recorded it and it came out like it had a life of its own. Writing about the track for its 25th birthday, Stereogum’s Ryan Leas christened the song as an “unlikely new standard” in contemporary pop songwriting. And a year ago Chris Isaak reflected on the enduring appeal of Wicked Game with the Omaha World Herald. There were other thematic similarities in the then-mysterious R&B singer The Weeknd’s own Wicked Games, which gained an unofficial video that comes across as a sinister cousin to Herb Ritts’s beach flaunt. So naturally a team up was in order then. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon took this one step further, later dubbing Lana Del Rey “the female Chris Isaak”. Everyone from R.E.M and London Grammar to Tori Amos and Turin Brakes has had a stab at covering the song, while a certain Lizzy Grant reintroduced herself to the world as Lana Del Rey with Video Games, a lamenting tale of tragic love ridden with a similar title, chord structure, and sense of vengeance as Isaak’s classic. You might think 30 years of familiarity would be inoculation enough against the widescreen wiles of Wicked Game, but its popularity has never waned, taking on a new life in the countless cover versions by indie and alternative acts over the years. It’s one of those weird hits that was divorced from its time and place to begin with, which makes for a weird legacy - you can hear it now, over and over again yet still freshly, without the same baggage of it summing up a particular era. With its lush, languid riff and distinctive production, its sound was like an alternate-universe reflection of classic Americana, rooted in an Presley-Orbison Old World melancholy of the 1950s, but still feeling contemporary due to the hallucinogenic melodrama bound up in that lead guitar work and Isaak’s mumbling big chorus. Some songs are masterpieces, some represent moments in time, and others are simply good jams.
But if ever there was a song to light a cigarette to before slowly kicking back in your chair and possibly running your fingers through your hair and/or loosening your collar… yeah, you’ve found it. I’ve rarely written about my birthday posse, but that’s about to change, because there’s someone else, and he’s a bit of a heartthrob.īorn on 26 June 1956 in Stockton California, with his fitter than Elvis stunt-double looks and twangy guitar, Chris Isaak has always seemed a little desynchronised from pop culture, no matter how retro-fashioned and nostalgia-obsessed it becomes. Of course, he’s already contributed at least one classic to the pop canon, its smokily cinematic romanticism also feeling more related to the worlds of a bygone era. And if anything makes you feel your age, it’s the realisation that one of the shiny and new pop stars of the day Ariana Grande came into the word while you were celebrating your 24th birthday. Whilst singers Georgie Fame celebrated his 26th, Mick Jones of The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite his 14th, and Berlin’s Terri Nunn celebrated her 8th. On the day I was born (the very same day as Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood, natch) Elvis Presley’s notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, celebrated his 60th birthday, which happened to be the 12th anniversary of ‘The King’ moving into Graceland*.
He said, ‘I’m going to go out and buy that record tomorrow.’ Cool fucker anyway, common to both Julee Cruise and Chris Isaak is their wonderful ability to write dreamy, aquatic sex songs.” - Tim Booth, James, 1994 I remember it was on Jukebox Jury and Barney from New Order was on, and he was the only one that twigged it. “Wicked Game is one of those songs you hear for the first time and think, ‘That may well be the greatest record I’ve ever heard‘.
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