Wiki
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Release Date
1 June 1989
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Length
11 tracks
Heart Shaped World is the third album by Chris Isaak. Released in 1989, it became his breakthrough album and featured the Top 10 hit "Wicked Game". The album was certified 3x Platinum by the RIAA and has sold about 2.6 million copies in the United States according to Nielson Soundscan.
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 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.
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."
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