The 90's US One-Hit Wonders Rate: WINNER REVEALED - Goodbye, farewell and amen
- Thread starter Ironheade
- Start date
he/him
I’m honestly stupefied my 11 lasted this long. I’m sure I just signed its death warrant by posting this.
He/Him
Are we sharing the same, perhaps?
she/her
That reminds me, since my 11 (Fade Into You) is out, I need to find a new song to root for. I'm thinking I might join Team Republica? It'll give me an excuse to post this The Voice performance where Tom Jones casually destroys everybody without even trying.
she/her
I also need a new ‘post Mazzy’ act to pledge allegiance to. Who do we have left now?
I suppose "Groove is in the heart", "Lovefool" and "Crush" will have to be my top 3 now that my 11 has fallen.
Seeing as my signature is still quoting "A good beat", I'll go for Groove for now.
Seeing as my signature is still quoting "A good beat", I'll go for Groove for now.
Oh... my, my, my.
Sometimes, you guys just can't give me a break, can you?
14. WICKED GAME
Average score: 7.947
Highest scores: 10 x 10 (@Ironheade , @Hudweiser , @CorgiCorgiCorgi , @Sprockrooster , @DJHazey , @əʊæ, @ModeRed , @CasuallyCrazed , @Conan , @AshleyKerwin )
Lowest scores: 1 x 0 (@Untouchable Ace )
Chart positions: #6 Hot 100, #41 Radio Songs, #12 Adult Contemporary, #2 Modern Rock, #10 Mainstream Rock
Year-End Hot 100: #79 (1991)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
It almost feels odd putting Chris Isaak in here, you know. Sure, he might have gotten his only shot at the Top 40 thanks to “Wicked Game” and that infamously steamy video, but he's a long-tenured, critically-acclaimed artist, with quite the cult following going for him and his moody 50's and 60's revival sound. But you know what? It was his only Top 40, I don't know how well the GP might know anything else by him, and hell, I love the song, so fuck it, “Wicked Game” gets in. And after all that uncertainty... it doesn't even make the Top 10 for my troubles?! Thanks, PopJustice. Thanks a whole lot.
Nice hair.
Born to a blue-collar family in Stockton, California, and of both German and Italian heritage, Christopher Joseph Isaak wasn't just the captain of his high school's all-male cheerleading squad. (Yeah, enjoy that image, guys.) No, he was born to sing, and most pertinently, he was immediately captured by the past, those heady days of the 50's and early 60's that he has striven to emulate for his whole career. As he said in an interview once: “There's Elvis and the Beatles, and then there's the rest of us, the mere mortals”. And it was a good time for him to grow up as such an unabashed classicist. After all, the 70's had seen something of a 50's rock and roll and rockabilly revival of their own, of which Happy Days was perhaps the most famous manifestation. But in the early 80's, the trend saw a flickering of popularity once more, the primary beneficiaries of it in the music world being Brian Setzer and his Stray Cats. It was this wave that Isaak rode for his first venture into the music world: after graduating from the University of the Pacific with his degree in English and communications in 1981, he formed a rockabilly band called the Silvertones. One thing that's kind of cool about Chris Isaak, incidentally, is that all of the Silvertones would remain as his solo backing band when his professional solo music career began, with bassist Rowland Salley and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson remaining his sidemen to this day. (The guitarist of the Silvertones, the late James Calvin Wilsey, left his employment in 1995, but his replacement Hershel Yatovitz is also still part of Isaak's band.) Good on him to show some loyalty to the ones who got him where he was, right!
A Silvertone, for the record. Now those are some sexy guitars!
Said solo career saw its first manifestation in 1985, when Isaak signed to Warner Bros. Records, and paid tribute to his first band by putting out his debut album Silvertone. It was immediately praised for his loose rockabilly sound that balanced the spirit of the 50's with a modern twist, and his haunting baritone croon and rich falsetto immediately won him plenty of (not unjustified) comparisons to both Elvis and Roy Orbison. John Fogerty referred to him as being “like a skyscraper against the landscape” at the time, and other avowed fans included Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. Unfortunately, all those celebrity endorsements did not translate into sales success for Silvertone, as it failed to chart. Furthermore, Isaak's 1986 self-titled follow-up, despite honing his style into a more commercially friendly brokenhearted lovers soul than the looser rock and roll of Silvertone, also only barely managed to scrape into the album charts, despite the song “Blue Hotel” managing to become a hit in France.
Fuck you, you fucking fuck.
At this time, Isaak was getting by on movie placements – “Suspicion of Love” appeared in Married to the Mob, and most famously, David Lynch would use two songs from Silvertone in what I would argue to be his best film, Blue Velvet. Chris' 50's aesthetic may have fit well with Lynch's warped visions of classic Americana, but it wasn't paying the bills, even with encouragement to go on with music from his idol Roy Orbison. His last shot at the big time (it seemed) coming with his move from Warner Bros. to Reprise Records, where his third album Heart Shaped World came out in 1989. This is where we find “Wicked Game”, the downhearted ballad about being attracted to someone you know is bad for you, which in a just world should have been a massive pop hit right off the bad. But we do not live in a just world. Heart Shaped World did not prove to be the blockbuster he had long hoped for, spending only ten weeks on the Billboard 200 and peaking at #149. While Isaak was not dropped by his label yet, he was downhearted and felt that he was just about on his way out.
Great film with one of Nicolas Cage's best performances, by the way. Go watch it.
But, as so often happens in this rate, that was not the end of the line. And it was all thanks to good ol' David Lynch again! When he was putting Wild at Heart together in 1990, he approached Isaak with an offer to contribute some songs to the soundtrack. Ultimately, he would use an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” for the film. Wild at Heart itself was not the vector for the song to become a hit; despite winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it flopped in its American release. But Lee Chesnut, a programme director at Atlanta rock station Power 99, happened to fall in love with it, and was particularly interested in the instrumental version of “Wicked Game”. After hunting down a copy of the soundtrack album, he began putting the vocal version of the song onto the air, and it turned out his listeners loved it. Word spread to rock stations all over the US, and eventually to pop stations. Four months after its first play on Power 99, and nearly two years after the release of its parent album, “Wicked Game” was a Top 10 single and a resurgent Heart Shaped World had gone gold. A lot of that was due to the song's video, directed by fashion photographer Herb Ritts, which featured Isaak and Danish supermodel Helena Christensen cavorting together on a Hawaiian beach (Christensen's toplessness artfully hidden by some clever camera tricks). Well, you know what they say. A little sex appeal never hurt one's commercial chances...
HI. *swoon*
So what do I think?
TEN.
What can I say? As far as pop ballads that got big in the 90's, a decade that had no short supply of huge blockbusters in that lane, they really do not get any better than “Wicked Game”. The arrangement of “Wicked Game” might be sparse, but then again, no, I'd prefer to call it “spare” - not an ounce of fat or filler. The slow brushed snares and gentle acoustic guitar rhythm are a steel-strong backbone, for as minimal as they sound, but the real draw here is the electric guitar work. The gentle, cascading rainfall melodies constantly shift in subtle ways, offering up tiny variations on the central motifs that ensure the song can never get stale or repetitive, and yet every gossamer-fingered twang of guitar is beautifully catchy from the first time it comes up, almost insidiously so. You guys gotta know by now, from the “Fade Into You” writeup, that I'm a sucker for a good moody slide guitar, and the much-missed James Calvin Wilsey provides some excellent work on the same here – the instrumental bridge is a sighing, lyrical sort of thing that details both apprehension and an irresistible sultry pull. The whole effect is rather like that reflected in the video, a luminous tropical Hawaiian beach with its hot weather made strange and oppressive by thick gathering clouds and a grim monochrome filter. Oh my. Best vocal performance in this rate? Yeah, I'd feel pretty comfortable giving him that accolade – Roy Orbison would be proud, for Chris Isaak also has the gift of capturing raw emotion with just a few simple yet perfectly judged phrasings (though Isaak is rather less dramatic and vibrato-heavy than Roy). Not only is his husky velvetine baritone a thing of pure joy, the kind of voice that could sing his shopping list and make it sound like a seduction, but he has a masterful command of it, letting it drift into the smokiest depths of his range before lifting it up towards the heavens at full strength. And that's just as well, for this is a song that requires such an emotive, ever-shifting vocal performance, and certainly cannot stay stuck in one gear. “Wicked Game”, at its core, is not the simple sex-playlist staple it may appear to be sonically, but rather a song of a complicated desire, a song of knowing that somebody is bad for you and yet being drawn inexorably into the bedsheets. And that slide into a perfect crystallien falsetto on the chorus, accompanied by backing vocals that are like the dark spectres of the Jordanaires for just that little extra atmospheric tinge, captures it beautifully. One of the most spine-tingling moments comes in the second verse, when Chris delivers the start in a hushed half-spoken meditative fashion, before working up to a desperate, hoarse cry of raw lust and passion in the section leading up to the second chorus, encapsulating all the complex and nuanced emotion of the lyric with just a few simple shifts in dynamic. So, yes. “Wicked Game” is simultaneously a respectful nod to the past that captures all its best parts, and a fantastic forward-thinking piece of its own. Sometimes, you give a song a 10 because of personal connections of some kind, as I did with “No Rain” and “Fade Into You”. But sometimes, you gotta do it because it's just that good. And if you ask me, “Wicked Game” is just that good.
Where Are They Now?™
Heart Shaped World would end up selling double platinum by the time its second wind was over and done with, but it produced no more singles. Reprise put out a compilation, also called Wicked Game, as a stop-gap in between albums, but aside from it getting “Blue Hotel” and a couple of his other older songs to re-chart internationally, no more promotion would come from that era. No, that would have to wait for the time that Chris Isaak put out his follow-up album, San Francisco Days, in 1993. I suppose I can see the logic from Reprise's executives there. After all, why bother trying to put a shine on old material, when the resurgence of “Wicked Game” had been a soundtrack-driven fluke anyway, and Isaak had some new material coming down the pipeline in fairly short order anyway? Well, San Francisco Days might have sold gold, but it was hardly the phenomenon that Heart Shaped World was; the lead single “Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me)” was a decent-sized rock hit, peaking at #7 on Modern Rock, but only making it to #5 on the Bubbling Under charts. None of its other singles would chart stateside, and only made the lower reaches of the charts in the UK. Shame, really, but I guess 50's rock balladry was never something that was going to find much of a comfortable niche in the pop mainstream of 1993.
Wow, this post is just a LITANY of classic movies, isn't it?
In 1995, Isaak would come out with what is arguably his most critically acclaimed full-length album, Forever Blue – I've even heard some people refer to it as “one of the great break-up albums”. It was certified platinum in the US, and arguably did nealy as well as Heart Shaped World for him. The lead single “Somebody's Crying” came this close to disqualifying Isaak for consideration for this rate, peaking as it did at #45 on the Hot 100, and also getting some play on adult-alternative radio. The album also yielded up another one of his signature songs, though, much like “Wicked Game”, it took a film placement to bring it into the public consciousness. The song in question was “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing”, which went unnoticed in 1995, but saw a new lease on life in 1999, when Stanley Kubrick used it for Eyes Wide Shut. In that incarnation, it would fail to make the Hot 100 and barely scraped onto the Bubbling Under charts, though it did become a #9 hit in Australia (a country that has always seemed to like him, as we shall see – Forever Blue ended up three times platinum there, for instance). However, this is unfortunately where the story of Chris Isaak's mainstream success pretty well comes to an end – though he would remain signed to Reprise Records and continue to put out albums, which have all charted (mostly in the lower half of the Top 40), he would have no more singles that caught on with the GP. Then again, as an artist out of time such as he was, “Wicked Game” was really kind of a fluke hit to begin with. Chris Isaak was always destined to end up as a cult artist, and that is where he was now: starting with the laid-back, cover-heavy tropical roots rock of his next album, 1996's Baja Sessions, he made a turn away from the pop mainstream and never looked back.
Lynch, Kubrick AND Bertolucci? Man, Chris knows how to pick a director.
Part of this was because he was working on his acting career, which he had occasionally pursued in parallel with music ever since he had had a small role as the SWAT team leader in The Silence of the Lambs. He then followed up by collaborating again with his old friend David Lynch, who cast him as Special Agent Chester Desmond in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992, and the following year, he would appear alongside Keanu Reeves in one of the lead roles of Bernardo Bertolucci's typically philosophical drama Little Buddha. (For which he got nominated for a Razzie for Worst New Star... undeservedly, in my opinion, but never let it be said that the Razzies were proper arbiters of trash.) You may also have caught him in a brief role as Uncle Bob, the producer of the One-Ders' first record, in That Thing You Do, but other than that, his roles have mostly been limited to cameos as himself on television. But there was one big exception - between 2001 and 2004, you could have caught one of the 47 episodes of The Chris Isaak Show on Showtime! This was a sitcom featuring Isaak and his bandmates as themselves... and also Mona, a topless “mermaid” with human legs who lives in the basement of Isaak's favourite club and, as per Wikipedia, acts as his conscience. (There are not enough !'s in the world.) Unfortunately, the entire show remains unreleased on DVD, and I don't believe it is available on streaming either, which is a shame, because it sounds absolutely bonkers and therefore amazing. Anybody who ever saw it or remembers it, hit me up.
But, of course, the music has never been fully on the backburner, even with all his side projects – acting, composing a theme song for The Late Late Show, having one season of his own music interview and performance show on The Biography Channel in 2009, even serving as a judge for a single season of the Australian X Factor. While his album release schedule isn't too regular these days – generally, you can expect an album of original material every four to six years, though he's also got some collections of covers out there – he's kept his quality average damned high, with nearly everything he's put out having at least some tracks that are on par with Heart Shaped World and Forever Blue. He stayed on Reprise Records for a long time, but for his last two, he's moved to Vanguard Records to keep the retro flag flying. As well as that, just like his fellow rate entrant Joan Osborne, he's put his classicism to good use by flexing his muscles as an interpretative vocalist who can handle the material of others sensitively and with heart. And being the artist he is, you just know what sort of material Isaak might pick.
In 2011, he would put out one of his more compelling efforts with Beyond the Sun, in which he paid direct tribute to his idols – recording in the original Sun Records studio in Tennessee, and with a set of covers of that label's artists, no less. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, he doesn't leave any of Sam Phillips' stable out, and listening to the care with which he treats these classic songs, it's clear that the media anointing as the successor to the legendary 50's rockers was not through aesthetic or affectation alone. His most recent album, 2015's First Comes the Night, was recorded in Nashville with country producers Dave Cobb and Paul Worley; it's more roots-rock than it is a straight up “Chris Isaak goes country” effort, but parts of it do lean in that direction, and he adapts it into his retro sound with the same air of care and professionalism that he applies to everything he's done thus far. At the age of 63, he's still touring regularly and keeping the spirit of rockabilly alive. So I feel quite justified in saying: you're one of this rate's true legends, Mr. Isaak. Keep marching on with that quiff up high!
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
Foolish games
Untouchable Ace (0): Just give the world the terrible Girls Aloud cover that isn't worth hearing already. (...No.)
Empty Shoebox (3): This is the first of our songs from car adverts. This was featured in the UK advertising for the Jaguar X Type. Which wasn't a great car, but it was better than the Rover 75. (See, advertisers, you might not want to use a song that says "I don't want to fall in love with you" for your ads...)
Auntie Beryl (5.3): All very tasteful, all a bit boring. I know it’s “classy”, but I’m not classy, and I’d like to stay awake once in a while.
iheartpoptarts (4): Background music for me, but I'd go to the beach with him anytime. (So does that mean Helena Christensen's free for me?)
Well wicked innit
Blond (8): I feel like that this guy’s yodelly voice will grate on some people, but I’m really into this. Also didn’t they play this when Ross and Rachel first had sex in Friends? An iconic 90's moment. (I'm sure it was.)
Filippa (7): What a wicked voice! The song as a whole a bit over dramatic for my taste. (Hey. Can't do a proper Orbison tribute without the drama!)
pop3blow2 (7.5): This song is fine, but I always thought it was a tad overrated. VH1 played the crap out of this video for about 5 years, so maybe i just tired of it.
chanex (8): I can't separate this song from the Calvin Klein commercial of a video but also can't deny that it always makes me feel wistful when I hear it. (I dunno, some of our voters didn't WANT to separate it...)
Seventeen Days (8): Chris Isaak just oozes sex appeal in the video for this, and he’s got the voice to match it.
WowWowWowWow (8): I love songs that make me think INTRIGUE! This is the one with the sexy music video, right? (Ohhhh yeah.)
berserkboi (9.9): Shocked this is here! Must be that that Eyes Wide Shut song was a much bigger deal in Australia than America then! (Indeed it was. I love "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing" too though! - Ed.) Early 90s dreamy pop in a nutshell.
4Roses (8.5): It's very Johnny Cash does Lana Del Rey. A moody rocky mountain hymn.
2014 (7.5): I like how it's quite dark and mysterious but prefer London Grammar's cover.
saviodxl (7.7): Love lamentation moanings sound sexy here, I have to admit! I almost feel sorry for him. (I certainly do feel sorry for him after this TRAVESTY of a result...)
DominoDancing (8.5): The guitar sound on this is just divine. (Nice work, Mr. Wilsey! RIP. - Ed.) And the moment he goes into falsetto for the chorus - that's just a great vocal hook.
unnameable (9): has a beautiful quality, sadly I bet misandryjustice will strike. (I dunno, any male vocal entry that makes the Top 20 I consider to have beaten it.)
Ganache (9): I'm a sucker for Chris Isaak croon. (That falsetto! *swoon*)
CasuallyCrazed (10): This is an iconic classic, even though we've never heard Nadine Coyle & Nicola Roberts dulcet tones on what is probably an even more iconic version of said classic. (Oi! I said this once already... no.)
Sprockrooster (10): If misandryjustice tears this one down... I will hunt you. I will hurt you. I will kill you. (Oh, SHIT. Beware the nice ones... - Ed.) That is one of the richest voices ever in music.
ModeRed (10): Does eerie guitar pop get better than this? Oh that intro…
əʊæ (10): Unsurprisingly, i live for the guitar.
DJHazey (10): LOVE the Novaspace cover of this one, but for once I actually knew an original before a cover, ddd. (GLAD TO HEAR IT. - Ed.) This is such a classic and I was definitely mesmerised by the video as a youngin'.
Hudweiser (10): This song is so haunting and amazing. Raign's version is also worth a listen. (Sure, might give that one a go later!)
CorgiCorgiCorgi (10): Someone leak that rumored Girls Aloud cover. (Third time's the charm! ...No.)
Sometimes, you guys just can't give me a break, can you?
14. WICKED GAME
Average score: 7.947
Highest scores: 10 x 10 (@Ironheade , @Hudweiser , @CorgiCorgiCorgi , @Sprockrooster , @DJHazey , @əʊæ, @ModeRed , @CasuallyCrazed , @Conan , @AshleyKerwin )
Lowest scores: 1 x 0 (@Untouchable Ace )
Chart positions: #6 Hot 100, #41 Radio Songs, #12 Adult Contemporary, #2 Modern Rock, #10 Mainstream Rock
Year-End Hot 100: #79 (1991)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
It almost feels odd putting Chris Isaak in here, you know. Sure, he might have gotten his only shot at the Top 40 thanks to “Wicked Game” and that infamously steamy video, but he's a long-tenured, critically-acclaimed artist, with quite the cult following going for him and his moody 50's and 60's revival sound. But you know what? It was his only Top 40, I don't know how well the GP might know anything else by him, and hell, I love the song, so fuck it, “Wicked Game” gets in. And after all that uncertainty... it doesn't even make the Top 10 for my troubles?! Thanks, PopJustice. Thanks a whole lot.
Nice hair.
Born to a blue-collar family in Stockton, California, and of both German and Italian heritage, Christopher Joseph Isaak wasn't just the captain of his high school's all-male cheerleading squad. (Yeah, enjoy that image, guys.) No, he was born to sing, and most pertinently, he was immediately captured by the past, those heady days of the 50's and early 60's that he has striven to emulate for his whole career. As he said in an interview once: “There's Elvis and the Beatles, and then there's the rest of us, the mere mortals”. And it was a good time for him to grow up as such an unabashed classicist. After all, the 70's had seen something of a 50's rock and roll and rockabilly revival of their own, of which Happy Days was perhaps the most famous manifestation. But in the early 80's, the trend saw a flickering of popularity once more, the primary beneficiaries of it in the music world being Brian Setzer and his Stray Cats. It was this wave that Isaak rode for his first venture into the music world: after graduating from the University of the Pacific with his degree in English and communications in 1981, he formed a rockabilly band called the Silvertones. One thing that's kind of cool about Chris Isaak, incidentally, is that all of the Silvertones would remain as his solo backing band when his professional solo music career began, with bassist Rowland Salley and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson remaining his sidemen to this day. (The guitarist of the Silvertones, the late James Calvin Wilsey, left his employment in 1995, but his replacement Hershel Yatovitz is also still part of Isaak's band.) Good on him to show some loyalty to the ones who got him where he was, right!
A Silvertone, for the record. Now those are some sexy guitars!
Said solo career saw its first manifestation in 1985, when Isaak signed to Warner Bros. Records, and paid tribute to his first band by putting out his debut album Silvertone. It was immediately praised for his loose rockabilly sound that balanced the spirit of the 50's with a modern twist, and his haunting baritone croon and rich falsetto immediately won him plenty of (not unjustified) comparisons to both Elvis and Roy Orbison. John Fogerty referred to him as being “like a skyscraper against the landscape” at the time, and other avowed fans included Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. Unfortunately, all those celebrity endorsements did not translate into sales success for Silvertone, as it failed to chart. Furthermore, Isaak's 1986 self-titled follow-up, despite honing his style into a more commercially friendly brokenhearted lovers soul than the looser rock and roll of Silvertone, also only barely managed to scrape into the album charts, despite the song “Blue Hotel” managing to become a hit in France.
Fuck you, you fucking fuck.
At this time, Isaak was getting by on movie placements – “Suspicion of Love” appeared in Married to the Mob, and most famously, David Lynch would use two songs from Silvertone in what I would argue to be his best film, Blue Velvet. Chris' 50's aesthetic may have fit well with Lynch's warped visions of classic Americana, but it wasn't paying the bills, even with encouragement to go on with music from his idol Roy Orbison. His last shot at the big time (it seemed) coming with his move from Warner Bros. to Reprise Records, where his third album Heart Shaped World came out in 1989. This is where we find “Wicked Game”, the downhearted ballad about being attracted to someone you know is bad for you, which in a just world should have been a massive pop hit right off the bad. But we do not live in a just world. Heart Shaped World did not prove to be the blockbuster he had long hoped for, spending only ten weeks on the Billboard 200 and peaking at #149. While Isaak was not dropped by his label yet, he was downhearted and felt that he was just about on his way out.
Great film with one of Nicolas Cage's best performances, by the way. Go watch it.
But, as so often happens in this rate, that was not the end of the line. And it was all thanks to good ol' David Lynch again! When he was putting Wild at Heart together in 1990, he approached Isaak with an offer to contribute some songs to the soundtrack. Ultimately, he would use an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” for the film. Wild at Heart itself was not the vector for the song to become a hit; despite winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes, it flopped in its American release. But Lee Chesnut, a programme director at Atlanta rock station Power 99, happened to fall in love with it, and was particularly interested in the instrumental version of “Wicked Game”. After hunting down a copy of the soundtrack album, he began putting the vocal version of the song onto the air, and it turned out his listeners loved it. Word spread to rock stations all over the US, and eventually to pop stations. Four months after its first play on Power 99, and nearly two years after the release of its parent album, “Wicked Game” was a Top 10 single and a resurgent Heart Shaped World had gone gold. A lot of that was due to the song's video, directed by fashion photographer Herb Ritts, which featured Isaak and Danish supermodel Helena Christensen cavorting together on a Hawaiian beach (Christensen's toplessness artfully hidden by some clever camera tricks). Well, you know what they say. A little sex appeal never hurt one's commercial chances...
HI. *swoon*
So what do I think?
TEN.
What can I say? As far as pop ballads that got big in the 90's, a decade that had no short supply of huge blockbusters in that lane, they really do not get any better than “Wicked Game”. The arrangement of “Wicked Game” might be sparse, but then again, no, I'd prefer to call it “spare” - not an ounce of fat or filler. The slow brushed snares and gentle acoustic guitar rhythm are a steel-strong backbone, for as minimal as they sound, but the real draw here is the electric guitar work. The gentle, cascading rainfall melodies constantly shift in subtle ways, offering up tiny variations on the central motifs that ensure the song can never get stale or repetitive, and yet every gossamer-fingered twang of guitar is beautifully catchy from the first time it comes up, almost insidiously so. You guys gotta know by now, from the “Fade Into You” writeup, that I'm a sucker for a good moody slide guitar, and the much-missed James Calvin Wilsey provides some excellent work on the same here – the instrumental bridge is a sighing, lyrical sort of thing that details both apprehension and an irresistible sultry pull. The whole effect is rather like that reflected in the video, a luminous tropical Hawaiian beach with its hot weather made strange and oppressive by thick gathering clouds and a grim monochrome filter. Oh my. Best vocal performance in this rate? Yeah, I'd feel pretty comfortable giving him that accolade – Roy Orbison would be proud, for Chris Isaak also has the gift of capturing raw emotion with just a few simple yet perfectly judged phrasings (though Isaak is rather less dramatic and vibrato-heavy than Roy). Not only is his husky velvetine baritone a thing of pure joy, the kind of voice that could sing his shopping list and make it sound like a seduction, but he has a masterful command of it, letting it drift into the smokiest depths of his range before lifting it up towards the heavens at full strength. And that's just as well, for this is a song that requires such an emotive, ever-shifting vocal performance, and certainly cannot stay stuck in one gear. “Wicked Game”, at its core, is not the simple sex-playlist staple it may appear to be sonically, but rather a song of a complicated desire, a song of knowing that somebody is bad for you and yet being drawn inexorably into the bedsheets. And that slide into a perfect crystallien falsetto on the chorus, accompanied by backing vocals that are like the dark spectres of the Jordanaires for just that little extra atmospheric tinge, captures it beautifully. One of the most spine-tingling moments comes in the second verse, when Chris delivers the start in a hushed half-spoken meditative fashion, before working up to a desperate, hoarse cry of raw lust and passion in the section leading up to the second chorus, encapsulating all the complex and nuanced emotion of the lyric with just a few simple shifts in dynamic. So, yes. “Wicked Game” is simultaneously a respectful nod to the past that captures all its best parts, and a fantastic forward-thinking piece of its own. Sometimes, you give a song a 10 because of personal connections of some kind, as I did with “No Rain” and “Fade Into You”. But sometimes, you gotta do it because it's just that good. And if you ask me, “Wicked Game” is just that good.
Where Are They Now?™
Heart Shaped World would end up selling double platinum by the time its second wind was over and done with, but it produced no more singles. Reprise put out a compilation, also called Wicked Game, as a stop-gap in between albums, but aside from it getting “Blue Hotel” and a couple of his other older songs to re-chart internationally, no more promotion would come from that era. No, that would have to wait for the time that Chris Isaak put out his follow-up album, San Francisco Days, in 1993. I suppose I can see the logic from Reprise's executives there. After all, why bother trying to put a shine on old material, when the resurgence of “Wicked Game” had been a soundtrack-driven fluke anyway, and Isaak had some new material coming down the pipeline in fairly short order anyway? Well, San Francisco Days might have sold gold, but it was hardly the phenomenon that Heart Shaped World was; the lead single “Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me)” was a decent-sized rock hit, peaking at #7 on Modern Rock, but only making it to #5 on the Bubbling Under charts. None of its other singles would chart stateside, and only made the lower reaches of the charts in the UK. Shame, really, but I guess 50's rock balladry was never something that was going to find much of a comfortable niche in the pop mainstream of 1993.
Wow, this post is just a LITANY of classic movies, isn't it?
In 1995, Isaak would come out with what is arguably his most critically acclaimed full-length album, Forever Blue – I've even heard some people refer to it as “one of the great break-up albums”. It was certified platinum in the US, and arguably did nealy as well as Heart Shaped World for him. The lead single “Somebody's Crying” came this close to disqualifying Isaak for consideration for this rate, peaking as it did at #45 on the Hot 100, and also getting some play on adult-alternative radio. The album also yielded up another one of his signature songs, though, much like “Wicked Game”, it took a film placement to bring it into the public consciousness. The song in question was “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing”, which went unnoticed in 1995, but saw a new lease on life in 1999, when Stanley Kubrick used it for Eyes Wide Shut. In that incarnation, it would fail to make the Hot 100 and barely scraped onto the Bubbling Under charts, though it did become a #9 hit in Australia (a country that has always seemed to like him, as we shall see – Forever Blue ended up three times platinum there, for instance). However, this is unfortunately where the story of Chris Isaak's mainstream success pretty well comes to an end – though he would remain signed to Reprise Records and continue to put out albums, which have all charted (mostly in the lower half of the Top 40), he would have no more singles that caught on with the GP. Then again, as an artist out of time such as he was, “Wicked Game” was really kind of a fluke hit to begin with. Chris Isaak was always destined to end up as a cult artist, and that is where he was now: starting with the laid-back, cover-heavy tropical roots rock of his next album, 1996's Baja Sessions, he made a turn away from the pop mainstream and never looked back.
Lynch, Kubrick AND Bertolucci? Man, Chris knows how to pick a director.
Part of this was because he was working on his acting career, which he had occasionally pursued in parallel with music ever since he had had a small role as the SWAT team leader in The Silence of the Lambs. He then followed up by collaborating again with his old friend David Lynch, who cast him as Special Agent Chester Desmond in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992, and the following year, he would appear alongside Keanu Reeves in one of the lead roles of Bernardo Bertolucci's typically philosophical drama Little Buddha. (For which he got nominated for a Razzie for Worst New Star... undeservedly, in my opinion, but never let it be said that the Razzies were proper arbiters of trash.) You may also have caught him in a brief role as Uncle Bob, the producer of the One-Ders' first record, in That Thing You Do, but other than that, his roles have mostly been limited to cameos as himself on television. But there was one big exception - between 2001 and 2004, you could have caught one of the 47 episodes of The Chris Isaak Show on Showtime! This was a sitcom featuring Isaak and his bandmates as themselves... and also Mona, a topless “mermaid” with human legs who lives in the basement of Isaak's favourite club and, as per Wikipedia, acts as his conscience. (There are not enough !'s in the world.) Unfortunately, the entire show remains unreleased on DVD, and I don't believe it is available on streaming either, which is a shame, because it sounds absolutely bonkers and therefore amazing. Anybody who ever saw it or remembers it, hit me up.
But, of course, the music has never been fully on the backburner, even with all his side projects – acting, composing a theme song for The Late Late Show, having one season of his own music interview and performance show on The Biography Channel in 2009, even serving as a judge for a single season of the Australian X Factor. While his album release schedule isn't too regular these days – generally, you can expect an album of original material every four to six years, though he's also got some collections of covers out there – he's kept his quality average damned high, with nearly everything he's put out having at least some tracks that are on par with Heart Shaped World and Forever Blue. He stayed on Reprise Records for a long time, but for his last two, he's moved to Vanguard Records to keep the retro flag flying. As well as that, just like his fellow rate entrant Joan Osborne, he's put his classicism to good use by flexing his muscles as an interpretative vocalist who can handle the material of others sensitively and with heart. And being the artist he is, you just know what sort of material Isaak might pick.
In 2011, he would put out one of his more compelling efforts with Beyond the Sun, in which he paid direct tribute to his idols – recording in the original Sun Records studio in Tennessee, and with a set of covers of that label's artists, no less. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, he doesn't leave any of Sam Phillips' stable out, and listening to the care with which he treats these classic songs, it's clear that the media anointing as the successor to the legendary 50's rockers was not through aesthetic or affectation alone. His most recent album, 2015's First Comes the Night, was recorded in Nashville with country producers Dave Cobb and Paul Worley; it's more roots-rock than it is a straight up “Chris Isaak goes country” effort, but parts of it do lean in that direction, and he adapts it into his retro sound with the same air of care and professionalism that he applies to everything he's done thus far. At the age of 63, he's still touring regularly and keeping the spirit of rockabilly alive. So I feel quite justified in saying: you're one of this rate's true legends, Mr. Isaak. Keep marching on with that quiff up high!
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
Foolish games
Untouchable Ace (0): Just give the world the terrible Girls Aloud cover that isn't worth hearing already. (...No.)
Empty Shoebox (3): This is the first of our songs from car adverts. This was featured in the UK advertising for the Jaguar X Type. Which wasn't a great car, but it was better than the Rover 75. (See, advertisers, you might not want to use a song that says "I don't want to fall in love with you" for your ads...)
Auntie Beryl (5.3): All very tasteful, all a bit boring. I know it’s “classy”, but I’m not classy, and I’d like to stay awake once in a while.
iheartpoptarts (4): Background music for me, but I'd go to the beach with him anytime. (So does that mean Helena Christensen's free for me?)
Well wicked innit
Blond (8): I feel like that this guy’s yodelly voice will grate on some people, but I’m really into this. Also didn’t they play this when Ross and Rachel first had sex in Friends? An iconic 90's moment. (I'm sure it was.)
Filippa (7): What a wicked voice! The song as a whole a bit over dramatic for my taste. (Hey. Can't do a proper Orbison tribute without the drama!)
pop3blow2 (7.5): This song is fine, but I always thought it was a tad overrated. VH1 played the crap out of this video for about 5 years, so maybe i just tired of it.
chanex (8): I can't separate this song from the Calvin Klein commercial of a video but also can't deny that it always makes me feel wistful when I hear it. (I dunno, some of our voters didn't WANT to separate it...)
Seventeen Days (8): Chris Isaak just oozes sex appeal in the video for this, and he’s got the voice to match it.
WowWowWowWow (8): I love songs that make me think INTRIGUE! This is the one with the sexy music video, right? (Ohhhh yeah.)
berserkboi (9.9): Shocked this is here! Must be that that Eyes Wide Shut song was a much bigger deal in Australia than America then! (Indeed it was. I love "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing" too though! - Ed.) Early 90s dreamy pop in a nutshell.
4Roses (8.5): It's very Johnny Cash does Lana Del Rey. A moody rocky mountain hymn.
2014 (7.5): I like how it's quite dark and mysterious but prefer London Grammar's cover.
saviodxl (7.7): Love lamentation moanings sound sexy here, I have to admit! I almost feel sorry for him. (I certainly do feel sorry for him after this TRAVESTY of a result...)
DominoDancing (8.5): The guitar sound on this is just divine. (Nice work, Mr. Wilsey! RIP. - Ed.) And the moment he goes into falsetto for the chorus - that's just a great vocal hook.
unnameable (9): has a beautiful quality, sadly I bet misandryjustice will strike. (I dunno, any male vocal entry that makes the Top 20 I consider to have beaten it.)
Ganache (9): I'm a sucker for Chris Isaak croon. (That falsetto! *swoon*)
CasuallyCrazed (10): This is an iconic classic, even though we've never heard Nadine Coyle & Nicola Roberts dulcet tones on what is probably an even more iconic version of said classic. (Oi! I said this once already... no.)
Sprockrooster (10): If misandryjustice tears this one down... I will hunt you. I will hurt you. I will kill you. (Oh, SHIT. Beware the nice ones... - Ed.) That is one of the richest voices ever in music.
ModeRed (10): Does eerie guitar pop get better than this? Oh that intro…
əʊæ (10): Unsurprisingly, i live for the guitar.
DJHazey (10): LOVE the Novaspace cover of this one, but for once I actually knew an original before a cover, ddd. (GLAD TO HEAR IT. - Ed.) This is such a classic and I was definitely mesmerised by the video as a youngin'.
Hudweiser (10): This song is so haunting and amazing. Raign's version is also worth a listen. (Sure, might give that one a go later!)
CorgiCorgiCorgi (10): Someone leak that rumored Girls Aloud cover. (Third time's the charm! ...No.)
she/her
Meanwhile...in Växjö:
he/him
The joy of my life when this came 8th of 8.
Speaking of Melodifestivalen connections to Chris Isaak:
Oh dear.
I undermarked this by at least 2.5 points.
Chris Isaak is just impossibly sexy in real life. I’ve seen him walking around San Francisco and both times it was like “Wow, that man is fine. OMG that’s Chris Isaak!” Sadly, he likes the ladies though. He asked out a gorgeous co-worker of mine years ago but she was already involved.
Some of the many dance versions the song inspired.
Paul Parker (who was pretty gorgeous in his day too):
Italo knockoff Kris Isak:
NYC big room House bootleg mix from Hani. This is just an edit, the full mix was 10 min+.
Some of the many dance versions the song inspired.
Paul Parker (who was pretty gorgeous in his day too):
Italo knockoff Kris Isak:
NYC big room House bootleg mix from Hani. This is just an edit, the full mix was 10 min+.
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she/her
#14?! More like Wicked Underrated, am I right?
I may have underscored this one by a point. Chris Isaak has such a fantastic voice, not to mention that he's pretty easy on the eyes. Any time I see him now though, I just think of him as Agent Desmond in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me".
I remember hearing his track "Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me)" on MTV as a kid one day in the summer, and the imagery and audio of it really stuck with me. To this day, I think of summertime when I hear it.
I remember hearing his track "Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me)" on MTV as a kid one day in the summer, and the imagery and audio of it really stuck with me. To this day, I think of summertime when I hear it.
He/Him
I never thought Wicked Game would have made it this far though... Well, the video certainly helped to get a point more from me, because... well, obvious reasons.
I've always found Chris Isaak incredibly attractive and I guess that was always part of the appeal? Maybe I should delve a little into his back catalogue, because other than Heart Shaped World I've never really heard anything else.
I've always found Chris Isaak incredibly attractive and I guess that was always part of the appeal? Maybe I should delve a little into his back catalogue, because other than Heart Shaped World I've never really heard anything else.