Chris Isaak
Wicked Game chords
Wicked Game by Chris Isaak is an intermediate song in Bm, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 3 chords (Bm, A, E) across 4 sections: Intro Riff → Verse → Chorus → Outro. 2 of the 3 shapes are open chords and Bm is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 113 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Bm → A, 8 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape Bm
- Key
- Bmwith no capo
- Tempo
- 113BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 32 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 4each with its own progression
Chords in Wicked Game
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro Riff♩=113
Verse♩=113
Chorus♩=113
Outro♩=113
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Wicked Game
The famous opening is not a chord part at all, it is a single-note line on the B string: open, then the 7th fret twice, back to open, then the 7th, 5th, 3rd, 2nd frets and open again. Play it with your index finger for the open notes and your ring finger sliding along the 7th, 5th and 3rd frets. It should sound like one continuous sine wave, so let every note ring completely rather than plucking them short.
Underneath that line the chords are Bm, A and E, two beats each, with E held for a full bar before the loop restarts. All three can be played up the neck as movable shapes: Bm at the 2nd fret, A as the one-finger barre or the full barre at the 5th, and E at the open position or the barre at the 7th. Keep the shapes small and let the low strings ring out, because the song has no drums driving it and the guitar has to fill that space.
There are only three chords and no chorus, so the whole song is one loop and the interest has to come from touch rather than harmony. The move that matters is E back to Bm: E is the only chord here with a sharp in it, so it is the one that lifts the phrase, and dropping back to Bm is what makes the loop sound like it is sinking. Play E as the open shape and let all six strings ring for the full bar, then let the Bm arrive late by a fraction — that hesitation is most of the atmosphere of the record.
The tempo is slow and the trap is that slow songs get played too fast. Set the metronome to 100 and play the four-chord loop as whole notes for two minutes, which is one full cycle every four beats, then add the B string riff on top while counting the beats out loud. If the riff and the chord changes drift apart, the riff is winning, which means you are starting it early. Practise the loop with the metronome clicking on beats two and four until the two hands lock.
How to practise Wicked Game
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → E (0-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
2 of the 3 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Bm until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A → E8×Bm → A8×Bm → E1×E → Bm1×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Bmevery section
- Aevery section
- Eevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 68 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 68 → 85 → 102 → 113 BPM. The recorded feel is around 113 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 102 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Wicked Game with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
Bm A E
2 of 3 stay open
Fret 1
Bbm Ab Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
Am G D
3 of 3 stay open
Fret 3
Abm F# C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
Gm F C
1 of 3 stay open
Fret 5
F#m E B
1 of 3 stay open
Fret 6
Fm Eb Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Em D A
3 of 3 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Wicked Game clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hey Jude, Wish You Were Here, The Weight, Blackbird.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Wicked Game turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
64bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by Eadd9, 6×.