Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash
I’ve recently discovered Daisy Gray’s cover of the Chris Isaak classic Wicked Game. I still can’t decide which I like best, although Gray’s cover might just be edging it, but both are equally haunting in their own way.
Wicked Game is described by Isaak as a tale of obsessive love. It’s a song of love found and lost. A love which becomes destructive through its unreasonable intensity and overwhelmingly obsessive nature demonstrated in the cry that in a world on fire it is only the loved that can save the lover.
When we think of love songs we probably think of the romantic, or maybe even the sacrificial nature of humanity we might experience through love, but is there a darker side? Isaak’s song certainly portrays a vision of something far less happy, that of a wicked game being played by one of the proponents of love. But is this really love? Indeed, what is it to love?
Perhaps the key lies in the subtlety of some of the lyrics; I’d never dreamed … strange what desire. Is there a case here that we confuse love, fantasy and desire? When we only see love in a romantic manner does this say more about what we are looking for from the other person to meet our own needs?
There is a hint of this in the song. The person's feelings being influenced by a wicked game that is being played out and the dreams surrounding it. It strikes me that in these lyrics there is a shift in responsibility for self, from self, to the other.
So where does this leave us? When we love someone can we really make them responsible for our needs, or hold them to account for how we might feel? When we do, are we really just living out some form of fantasy life in which we deny our self-responsibility?
Perhaps then, the haunting sound of this song doesn’t just lie in its musicality, but in the resounding interplay between love, responsibility and emotion and the idea that I might need to rethink what I consider love. Just viewing love as romance and fantasy might meet my desires but true love changes things.
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