"Wicked Game" is a 1989 song by Chris Isaak from his third studio album Heart Shaped World. 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 (1990). Lee Chesnut, an Atlanta radio station music director who loved 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 song is written in the mode of B Dorian. Through several years, many different versions and arrangements of the song were made before the final version was released. Both the bassline and drums (except the cymbals) were sampled from previous recordings of the song and then looped.
Famous quotes containing the words wicked and/or game:
“There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at
rest.
There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the
oppressor.”
—Bible: Hebrew Job (l. III, 17–18)
“In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)