Wicked Game

The backstory of the original and our cover of the song by Chris Isaak

The Original:

I remember seeing this video and thinking it was probably the sexiest music video ever made. It was directed by Herb Ritts, a famous photographer known for his work in black-and-white, often featuring supermodels.

For the Wicked Game video, he cast supermodel Helena Christensen to star opposite Chris Isaak, and it’s a flirt-fest of steamy fast cuts of Isaak and Christensen rolling on the sand, undressing, making out and whispering to each other.

Chris Isaak said that the intense chemistry seen on screen was due to Christensen’s acting chops and Ritts’ direction, rather than any real-life romance between them.

I’m always a little bummed when I find out on-screen chemistry just turns out to be acting….

The setting was idyllic. The shoot took place on the Kamoamoa Beach in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island, unique due to its black lava sand, and creating a stunning contrast for the black and white photography.

Tragically, this specific beach was completely covered by lava shortly after the video was shot, making the footage the last record of a lost natural landscape.

When the video was released, controversy only made the song more popular. Back in the early 90’s, the scanty clothing and raw sexuality made big waves on MTV and VH1.

But the video’s popularity was undeniable; it won the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Male Video and Best Cinematography in 1991.

The one who really took one for the team was Helena Christensen, who after a day of kneeling and rolling around on black lava sand, was bleeding from the knees down.

Ahh, the glamour of the supermodel…..

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Our Version:

An assignment from my audio production course at Mastering.com was to create a cover in a specific style or genre different from the original. This lesson opened up a childlike joy for reinterpreting some of my favourite songs from decades ago.

For this one, I was experimenting with lofi and trip hop styles, so was listening to Portishead and Massive Attack for inspiration. It has that dreamy, reverby feel of the vocals, guitars and synths.

I really wanted to feature an authentic guitar, and this was the first project I did with my classmate and friend Matt Mendoza . On this, he plays bass, guitar and sings, and is one of the most efficient and ‘get ‘er done’ people I’ve worked with, both in and out of music.

We’ve since collaborated on more covers together, and his skill in so many areas inspires me. I didn’t even ask him for the live bass tracks he recorded - he just sent them in service to the song. I love that.

Producer Jam starts next week!

Speaking of good-heartedness, we’ve created a space for women producers to gather and create music together.

For the very first Producer Jam, I’ll be teaming up on Zoom with 3 producer friends - Kyra (aka seeing lavender), Nicole Bazos and Alexandria Maillot - to create a holiday-themed cover song.

Over 4 weekly meetings, we’ll be bringing our collaboration from conception to the arrangement and recording vocals to tracking the vocals and instruments, and finally to mixing, mastering and releasing the song.

We wanted to make the ‘production studio’ more accessible to women producers, artists and musicians, so all are invited to join us for this 4 week song sprint starting next Wednesday, Nov. 12th at 5:30 EST.

We’ll share our process of working together as we create an intentional, emotion-centric song for distribution to film and tv.

And thanks to The MAD Records Monologue and The MAD Records Sync-Stack for introducing us all to each other and giving us a landing place for our music!

Subscribe for free and we’ll send complete details and more about our guest producers early next week. We can’t wait!