Chris Isaak

This Californian crooner, an optimist by nature, defies the prevailing melancholy to build an extraordinary musical empire.

Unfazed by trends, Chris Isaak—a worthy heir to Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and the great Elvis Presley—is a breath of fresh air, gracefully freezing time in its tracks. This modern-day cowboy, ready to pull out his secondhand Gibson J-200 at the slightest stir of emotion, couldn’t care less about trends or eras. With a charming smile, aerodynamic hairstyle, and clothes in electric colors, the rough diamond from Stockton—a quiet California town—lays his smooth, languid voice over velvety melodies, following in the footsteps of his childhood heroes, like Leadbelly and Hank Williams, whom he used to listen to on an old, barely functional record player.

In a way, Chris Isaak, who comes from a very modest family, has always been a step behind—and therein lies the paradox. For the American crooner, a former talented boxer whose nose still bears the scars, always strikes at the right moment, and without warning, to blow the masses away with hits that came out of nowhere, which no one believed in. “Blue Hotel” was predicted to be a commercial flop by his label at the time, and “Wicked Game” was written off as a disaster: they became global hits. Yes, this die-hard fan of Roy Orbison, who describes himself as halfway between a poet and a redneck, could have fallen into obscurity many times over.