The tragic truth behind Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’
As music fans, it’s often easy to get lost in the sound and style that helps us romanticise it. There are also a lot of success stories to enjoy, which further expand our enjoyment of the genre. That being said, the music industry, like every other industry, often isn’t fair, and the story behind Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ is an example of one of the times when the music industry screwed over those that make it great.
The track ‘Wicked Game’ wasn’t initially given its flowers. The song about obsessive love featured on Isaak’s 1989 album, Heart Shaped World, but failed to stand out amongst some of the other songs that featured. Initially, Isaak had the same attitude as many subsequent listeners, as he wasn’t into the song when it was first written.
The original guitar part, which is now incredibly recognisable for its haunting melancholy, was written by James Calvin Wilsey. Isaak didn’t like it, but the producers got excited over the lick and decided to run with it. Seeing that it was gaining traction in the studio, Isaak put some lyrics to it, which he claims came naturally to him. “I think that sometimes you get easy ones that come very quick, and you’re really glad.”
Despite the song not doing great initially, it was eventually picked up by David Lynch, who used the instrumental in his film Wild at Heart—given how recognisable and instantly alluring the guitar part in the song is, a lot of people, upon seeing the movie, decided to track down the original song. One of those people was Lee Chestnut, a DJ from Atlanta, Georgia, who started playing it on his radio station. After that, the song went into the charts and started getting its deserved recognition.
Given that the song’s instrumental part led to it becoming a hit, you would like to think that the person responsible for it was given a fair cut, but that wasn’t the case. Wilsey wasn’t given a writing credit on the song, and as such, when it started to make money, Isaak got all of the songwriting money from it and half of the publishing, whereas Wilsey got less than 20% of the money from the record sales.
There was already tension between Wilsey and Isaak at the time. Isaak was getting fed up with a drug addiction that plagued Wilsey. Meanwhile, Wilsey was getting bored of how Isaak handled the band, making every member sign a non-disclosure agreement. The disputes over money were enough to drive a bigger wedge between the two, who soon stopped working together.
Wilsey died on Christmas Eve in 2016 without any money and homeless. It’s an unfair story that sees a talented musician not be cut a fair share of what was rightfully his, and the story behind the song makes that haunting guitar part even more so.
