Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

Songwriter Chris Isaak clearly loves the reverb-laden rockabilly and country of Sun Studios. In particular, he transfers the sweeping melancholy of Roy Orbison's classic Monument singles ("Crying," "Oh, Pretty Woman," "In Dreams") to the more stripped-down, rootsy sound of Sun, resulting in a stylized take on '50s and '60s rock & roll that made him into a star in the early '90s, propelled to a great degree by the hit single "Wicked Game."

Isaak began performing after he graduated from college, forming the rockabilly band Silvertone. The group, which featured guitarist James Calvin Wilsey, bassist Rowland Salley, and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson, would become the singer/guitarist's permanent supporting band. Isaak released his first album, Silvertone, on Warner Bros. in 1985. It was critically well received yet failed to sell well. Two years later, he released the self-titled Chris Isaak, which managed to scrape into the Top 200 album charts. After its release, the singer began an acting career with a bit part in Jonathan Demme's 1988 film Married to the Mob; he would later have parts in Wild at Heart, The Silence of the Lambs, and A Dirty Shame, as well as starring in his own situation comedy series for the Showtime cable network.

Released in 1989, Heart Shaped World initially sold more than Chris Isaak, yet it didn't manage to break big until late 1990, when the single "Wicked Game" was featured in David Lynch's Wild at Heart. Soon, the single became a Top Ten hit; the album also made it into the Top Ten and sold over a million copies. Both 1993's San Francisco Days and 1995's Forever Blue mined essentially the same vein as Heart Shaped World, yet both went gold and spawned a handful of hits. In 1996, Isaak released The Baja Sessions; Speak of the Devil followed two years later. Isaak's busy touring schedule and growing visibility as an actor kept him out of the recording studio until 2002, when he released Always Got Tonight, though in 2004 he did find time to cut his first seasonal album, Chris Isaak Christmas, which featured five new Yuletide tunes along with a batch of holiday favorites. The musician once again flexed his TV muscles in 2009 with The Chris Isaak Hour, whose debut on The Biography Channel was promoted in part by Mr. Lucky, his first album of original material in seven years.

"Wicked Game" is a 1989 song by Chris Isaak from his third studio album Heart Shaped World. It is written in the mode of B Dorian. Despite being released as a single in 1989, it did not become a hit until it was later featured in the David Lynch film Wild at Heart. Lee Chesnut, an Atlanta radio station music director who was obsessed with David Lynch films, began playing the song and it quickly became a nationwide top ten hit in January 1991, reaching #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making it the only hit song of his career in the U.S. James Calvin Wilsey played the distinctive lead guitar solo on the song.

The music video of the song was directed by Herb Ritts, shot in Hawaii and featured top model Helena Christensen rolling and frolicking on the beach with Isaak. It was filmed in black and white. Christensen was topless and Isaak was shirtless through most of the video, although clever camera angles concealed any actual nudity. Viewers still reacted to Christensen's sexually suggestive performance, and the video was later featured on MTV's Sexiest Video of All-Time countdown.[citation needed] The video won the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Male Video, Best Cinematography and Best Video from a Film. A previous version of the video was commissioned for the Wild at Heart soundtrack, and was directed by David Lynch.

The video was ranked #13 on VH1's 100 Greatest Videos and was also ranked #4 on VH1's 50 Sexiest Video Moments. The video was ranked #73 on Rolling Stone magazine's "The 100 Top Music Videos". The video ranked #1 on Fuse's "40 Sexiest Videos" in 2010.