RAIGN is the stage name of Rachel Rabin, a London-born singer-songwriter who spent years writing for other people before she stepped out under her own name. She co-wrote “Been Lying” on Rita Ora’s 2012 debut, and her first RAIGN single, “Don’t Let Me Go”, had already been used on The Vampire Diaries when she auditioned for The X Factor with it in 2014. Simon Cowell put her through, then gave her seat to Fleur East at the six-chair stage. Her cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” came out on Millionaire London Records on 29 September 2014, a day after her exit was reported.
The original was a slow-burner in its own right. Isaak wrote it for Heart Shaped World (Reprise, 1989), and it only became a hit after David Lynch used it in Wild at Heart, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1991. RAIGN’s version, listed on every service as “Wicked Games”, runs 3:35. It was produced by Mysto & Pizzi, the Queens duo of Slav Vynnytsky and Marc Joseph, who had made records for R. Kelly and Kelly Rowland, remixed Justin Timberlake and Tiësto, and executive-produced her early releases.
Coverage at the time was small, and none of it documents who played what. Towleroad heard a big, cinematic electro-pop take built around her voice. Stereogum, surveying 25 years of “Wicked Game” covers in 2016, filed it with the club-pop versions by Linda Pritchard and Milk Inc.: a little slower, closer to the original’s pace, but sharing little with Isaak’s record beyond the melody, the words and the chords.
It found its audience on television. On 6 September 2016 the contortionist Sofie Dossi performed her America’s Got Talent semi-final routine to it, and RAIGN’s channel posted the official audio that night. In 2021 The Miz and Witney Carson danced a Hellraiser-themed paso doble to it on Dancing with the Stars. By then it had become the closing track of her 2015 EP Knocking on Heavens Door. Two years after the show dropped her, a cover she released in the same week put her voice in front of a prime-time audience.
