Reception
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
When Heart Shaped World was released in the summer of 1989, it was on Billboard's pop album chart for ten weeks, reaching no higher than No. 149; but in October 1990, after Lee Chesnut, music director of WAPW in Atlanta, played the song repeatedly over two weeks after hearing an instrumental version on the soundtrack from the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart, "Wicked Game" was released as a single and the album reached the 7th spot on the chart, garnering sales of more than 500,000 copies. Probably more important in propelling single and album sales, though, was the steamy video featuring a topless Helena Christensen and a shirtless Isaak in the surf and on the beach. Filmed in black and white, the video was in heavy rotation on MTV.
In March 1991, Entertainment Weekly described the scene at the sold-out start of his post-"Wicked Game" release tour:
Reprise staged a gaudy, sold-out gig at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater. Sean Penn was there. So were Eric Roberts, k.d. lang, Dwight Yoakam, and, standing discreetly in a side aisle, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. There were lots of young girls, whose screaming Isaak may have to get used to. Afterward came The Hollywood Party, where, amid more dazzling stars, Isaak (decked out in his shiny brocade stage suit) got his first gold record while the waiters passed around goat cheese quesadillas and a Hawaiian band played in the background. It was a lot to handle, but then, as Isaak had said the night before..., "I used to tar-paper roofs for a living. So, as far as I'm concerned, this is a pretty fun job."
At the first of a May 1991 two-night stand at the Beacon Theatre in New York City—the first in that city after "Wicked Game" became a top 10 hit— Isaak's performance was characterized as "consummate showmanship": performances "right on the edge of caricature" yet with the ability to "infuse the ballads "Wicked Game" and "Blue Spanish Sky" ... with a spine-tingling intensity."
Read more about this topic: Heart Shaped World (Chris Isaak Album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)