I've never been able to get a handle on Chris Isaak exactly. The bruised rootsy James Dean approach is generally palatable and even convincing enough, though sometimes perhaps too much so, verging on shtick. You can play this one too much. Revisiting Heart-Shaped World recently reminded me more than anything of time lost in coffeeshops with posers—Starbucks, specifically, where I believe I once purchased Isaak's next album San Francisco Days. Remember when Starbucks used to sell albums? What a franchise. Heart-Shaped World includes Isaak's biggest hit in "Wicked Game" (which topped out at #6 in 1991). An instrumental version made it into David Lynch's movie Wild at Heart and later Isaak got a plum role in Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as FBI Special Agent Chester Desmond. My problem with "Wicked Game," which is suitably moody on the subject of unrequited love or something like it, starts with the way he chose to blur the word "love" in the chorus into the word "lust": "No, I don't wanna fall in luhh - sss / With you." It's just too cute by half, a big broad wink, as if the singer knows he's too good-looking ever to be rejected and desperately wants you to know it too. The longing hurt is just another pose in the coffeeshop after all. This guy doesn't fall in love, he falls in lust, passing sexual infatuation. It's the stoic and the agony of cool. Isaak almost has the chops to put as much ache into his vocal as Roy Orbison himself. But that's one way he comes up short of Orbison—there are enough tells to know his singer doesn't mean it. Isaak's brand of star appeal goes directly to Elvis Presley as much as James Dean or Orbison, of course. Men are hurt in love in Elvis songs too, you call tell by the trembling lip, but actually no, not really. Elvis, always, is above the mess—it's one of the things that made him fat. For these guys it's either about sex or mothers and Isaak sadly does not have that range, as his mother rarely if ever comes up. I'm carping a lot but Heart-Shaped World (and San Francisco Days too, for that matter) often plays sweet and easy and can give a room a glow. It's quite an attractive surface but maybe only a surface.
I'm mildly stunned that "Wicked Game" topped out at 6 on the charts. It felt like much of that year it was ubiquitous in public spaces. But maybe that's because I was spending too much time in Starbucks?! Even though this was before Schultz had sold out the Sonics this is unlikely. I was always a little snooty about my coffee shops and frequented more often Caffe Vita or Zokas. I'm thinkin' maybe "Wicked Game" was one of those kind of hits that became an instant Muzak staple, which might not have fully registered in chart tallies.
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