There’s a more intimate relationship between poker and music than just having a bit of background sound while you shuffle cards. Poker's a game that’s associated with dimly lit rooms, brooding players and wads of banknotes scattered around the table.
Even if that’s far from your reality of the game poker is, by its nature, all about taking chances. It’s exciting and fun yet carries a sting in its tale: poker is emotional.
Music has always riffed off human emotions, songs about love, loss, pain and joy populate thousands of releases. So, we can see a psychological connection between certain types of music and a game of poker.
For this reason, poker has inspired artists for decades, so let’s take a look at three fantastic examples.
Lady Gaga: Poker Face (2008)
The reference to a game of poker comes thick and fast in Lady Gaga’s 2008 hit. And the main title refers to, of course, showing no emotion to not give your game away.
Gaga claimed that the song was written about bisexuality, the poker face metaphorically describing hidden thoughts while being intimate with a person of the opposite sex. In this instance, poker is being used as an analogy for something else and isn’t referring to the game directly. But that doesn’t stop the strong connection between the song and the game.
Kenny Rogers (Written by David Schlitz): The Gambler (1978)
Off the bat, we know that this song is about gambling, if the title isn’t obvious enough, it uses a litany of poker references to ram this home. For example, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em”, but, again, the song is allegorical.
The story is set on a train and told in the first person about a young man meeting a professional gambler. But really the song is about the human condition, dealing with the hand that life has given us.
And what better than Poker to give that last sentiment some weight?
Motörhead: The Ace of Spades (1980)
There’s no messing around with Motörhead’s Ace of Spaces. This one is about playing poker, no metaphors, allegories or analogies here.
Sure, you can read stuff into it like life’s a gamble etc. but that’s taking all the fun out of it. Lemmy himself says it best on the record, “the pleasure is to play. Makes no difference what you say”.
Having said all that, it’s probably best enjoyed, ‘in the back of a transit van travelling at 90 mph,’ which is where Lemmy claimed to have written it: play it at your poker night and you risk scaring off all your players.
There are, of course, plenty of other artists that pick at poker references to embellish aspects of their songs. And some music videos use poker and the casino as a visual backdrop to their music too.
We’ve already come across one, Kenny Rogers ‘The Gambler’ comes with a music video featuring Ken getting ready to play poker. It’s a pretty limp affair mind you, so how does the competition fair?
Arctic Monkeys: Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino (2018)
We join Artic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner despondently wandering around a casino in and around slot machines and gaming tables for reasons that aren't made clear. It doesn’t really matter though, the fact is that it looks super cool.
The album is a concept effort telling of a luxury development on the moon. It was one of their first to ditch their trademark guitar sound and, generally, favourably received.
U2: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (1987)
Here we’ve got pop megastars U2 hanging out in Las Vegas under the glare cast by casinos and bars as they go about their business. Quite what the connection is between the lovelorn lyrics and shooting craps/playing roulette is anyone’s guess.
But, according to the residents of Las Vegas, the video did quite a lot to boost the city’s tourism. And the song is still popular some thirty-five years on so, so you might say that U2’s video gamble paid off and, guess what, it still looks great.
Katy Perry: Waking Up in Vegas (2008)
Of all of the references to casinos on this page, it doesn’t get gamier than this. It’s a rag to riches to rags story as Katie and her man shoot their last quarter on a slot machine.
And guess what, they win big! We follow their journey as they hit the town winning more as they go along. At one point they even get married (in a scene featuring Vegas heavyweights ‘Penn and Teller’) but it doesn’t last.
In the end, they lose all the money they won, but hey, they still have each other. Funnily enough, it’s probably the best song to play poker with as well, which brings us nicely full circle back to the start.
