Much to my surprise, this song was released three years prior to being selected as the theme song of the TV Show True Blood. In fact, the song didn’t even chart at the time. I was going to say here that Jace Everett seems to have picked up where Chris Isaak left off, but the Wikipedia article already did that for me. According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review for Allmusic, he compared it to Isaak’s song Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing, only “less menacing and a little rowdier.” He’s right. The songs do share a lot in common. I would say that they both also share that thing with the song Little Red Riding Hood where it seems innocent enough till you play it over dark images and/or video. That certainly explains the multitude of fan-made videos that do just that with Bad Things.

Sadly, the music video for the song is pretty generic. The only artistic touch I can see is when the tint changes from something bright to a darkness when the song lyrics call for it. Otherwise, it is pretty much there to put the primary focus on Everett with the woman he is singing about thrown in while barely playing a role in it. I took a look at another Jace Everett music video, and this tint shift seems to be a thing they repeated at least twice.

Director Kristin Barlowe directed the music video. I can find only 15 credits for sure that she did in the area of music videos, but based on her IMDb page, she has done far more, and continues to work in this field today.

I was able to find an interesting little interview with Jace Everett over on People Magazine’s website. There isn’t a whole lot there, but it is interesting to hear some of the backstory on the song from Everett himself. The most interesting thing he mentions is that country radio really didn’t agree that the song could have been a hit when it was released. That doesn’t surprise me since country radio has been under very tight control for many decades.

Enjoy!