{"id":50947,"date":"2018-04-10T16:21:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T15:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/centmagazine.co.uk\/?p=50947"},"modified":"2018-04-12T10:20:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T09:20:10","slug":"verge-wicked-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.centmagazine.co.uk\/?p=50947","title":{"rendered":"Verge; Wicked Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Isaak\u2019s much treasured 1989 song, \u2018Wicked Game\u2019 is a ballad about unrequited love. Its words allude to conflicted emotion as memories of infatuation blur into sorrow.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

Irish singer James Vincent McMorrow\u2019s cover, released on the EP \u2018We Don\u2019t Eat\u2019, is one of the artist\u2019s most recognised singles, and its success cannot be measured by mere imitation. Its guitar riff isn\u2019t completely dissimilar to the old, but it does promise a new experience. It might be claimed that McMorrow\u2019s version is missing the ambiguity and the timeless, dreamlike depth that compliments the original, but what McMorrow\u2019s \u2018Wicked Game\u2019 does do is take the sorrowful aspect of the song, and almost solely home in on this element. The product of this allows the listener to see the subject of the lyrics as merciless in their \u2018game\u2019, a game which is entirely unfair on the song’s narrator. In both versions, this narrator is reaching out with both hands and failing to make contact, but in this cover, there\u2019s an unfamiliar kind of melancholy, as if the person who is the cause of the narrator\u2019s pain is somebody who already belongs to the past.<\/p>\n