Wicked Game: Behind Chris Isaak’s Song Of Obsessive Love

Even then, success for Wicked Game was a slow-burn. Following its release as a single, on 14 July 1989, it took a radio station (WAPW, in Atlanta) to pick up the vocal version of the song – and start playing it heavily – for its intoxicating flavour to spread further. Eventually, Wicked Game become a stunning worldwide hit.

What is the meaning of Wicked Game?

Wicked Game has enigmatic lyrics, and that’s one of the reasons for its resonance. Expressing the paradox of deep desire and paralysing fear of heartbreak, the song ends on a truly dejected note – that “nobody loves no one”.

Yet the song itself is neither defeatist nor cynical; amazingly, it feels almost hopeful. So much of that is due to Chris Isaak’s plaintive vocal. Isaak’s style has been compared to artists such as Roy Orbison and Scott Walker, two singers with a legendary ability to make hearts hurt and tears flow.

Although it’s often assumed that Wicked Game is about the emotionally brutal experience of unrequited love, Isaak has said he composed it in the context of a late-night casual hook-up.

“There was a girl on the way over,” he told Rolling Stone in 1991. “It was one of those things where they call, they say, ‘I’m comin’ over.’ You know you shouldn’t, but you let ’em. Hang up the phone and go, ‘Oh, no. Now we’re gonna be in trouble.’” Isaak wrote the bulk of the song before she arrived, struck by the pull of seductive danger. But, once his visitor knocked on the door, there was no more songwriting that night.

What was the video for Wicked Game like?

Although David Lynch directed the first video for Wicked Game, this wasn’t the most famous version. Once it was clear, in 1990, that Wicked Game was picking up a lot of interest, a new video was commissioned. Herb Ritts – who also created the clips for Madonna’s Cherish and Tina Turner’s Way Of The World – directed the sensual black-and-white clip.

“I remember Herb saying, ‘There’s this girl and she’s not really known, but she’s good,” Isaak recalled in 2020. “Her name is Helena Christensen.” The video for Wicked Game helped kickstart Christensen’s modelling career as well as Isaak’s musical one.

“I am forever grateful to Herb Ritts for this little miracle of a music video,” Christensen told Harper’s Bazaar in 2020. “I had no idea of the lasting impact it would have or how emotional people would feel about it. Especially when I was running on that burning lava beach with bleeding feet from all the sharp rocks!”

Who has covered Wicked Game?

An enormous variety of artists have covered Wicked Game, in a plethora of different styles. R.E.M., Tori Amos and London Grammar have performed the song live; acts to have tackled it in the studio include the gothic metal band HIM, dance act Parra For Cuva and indie-folk group Boy And Bear.

Girls Aloud – who have a history of interesting cover versions, from Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict A Riot to I’m Every Woman by Chaka Khan – have also recorded the song, although their version remained unreleased at the time. It was only in 2024, as part of the 20th-anniversary celebration of their album Chemistry, that it saw the light of day.

Lana Del Rey, whose early work in particular echoes some of Isaak’s themes and moods, invited Chris Isaak on stage with her in 2019 to duet on the song. She was performing at the Hollywood Bowl and introduced Wicked Game by saying, “We can’t be in the middle of Hollywood and not hear the sexiest song of all time.” Del Rey, barefoot and compelling, blended perfectly with Isaak’s croon.

The song has also been sampled by several artists, including Jennifer Lopez on Midnight Trip To Vegas and deadmau5 on Luv N’ Stuff.

What did Chris Isaak do after Wicked Game?

Once Wicked Game lit the fuse, Chris Isaak’s career exploded. He followed the song with another hit, Blue Hotel. The album Heart Shaped World – which had been so brutally dismissed in its early days – went on to sell more than half a million copies.

Isaak developed a parallel acting career, appearing in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Married To The Mob and The Silence Of The Lambs. “I’m a natural ham,” he joked in 2012. “It doesn’t bother me to perform. Apparently, people’s number-one fear is public speaking and number two is death! Well, not in my case.”

Yet it’s music, and the audience that Wicked Game has brought, that still drives Chris Isaak. “I get to go to work and look forward to it,” he said in 2016. “This band’s been together, the same guys, 30-something years, and knock on wood, I’ve never missed a day’s work. I must like it.”

Find out where Wicked Game ranks among the best Chris Isaak songs.