Personal Jesus


"Personal Jesus" is a song by the English electronic band Depeche Mode. It was released as the lead single from their seventh studio album, Violator, in August 1989 by Mute Records. It reached No. 13 on the UK singles chart and No. 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The single was their first to enter the US top 40 since 1984's "People Are People" and was their first gold-certified single in the US. In Germany, "Personal Jesus" is one of the band's longest-charting songs, staying on the West German Singles Chart for 23 weeks. The accompanying music video was directed by Anton Corbijn and filmed in Spain.
In 2004, "Personal Jesus" was ranked No. 368 in Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and in September 2006 it was voted as one of the "100 Greatest Songs Ever" in Q magazine. "Personal Jesus" was re-released as a single in May 2011 for the Depeche Mode remix album Remixes 2: 81–11, with the leading remix by the production team Stargate.
The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson.

Background and composition

In mid-1989, the band began recording in Milan with record producer Flood. After a three-week pre-production session with band member and producer Alan Wilder in London, the full band met at Logic Studios in Milan, Italy for a seven week session. Although the band didn't get much recording done in Milan, the process did help the band and Ellis coalesce around their new sound and working style. The band had asked songwriter Martin Gore to bring less complete demos to these sessions, as in the past he'd brought nearly-complete demos which had limited the band's ability to improvise in the studio. Accordingly, Gore brought in a very simple demo for a new song called "Personal Jesus", which he played by tapping the beat with his foot while playing the melody on an acoustic guitar.
The song, with lyrics described as "melding the sacred and the sexual, the pious and the profane," was inspired by the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley; according to Gore:
The band liked the sound of the song, and selected it as an early single before the rest of the album had even been recorded, saying it was a perfect song that said "here's Depeche Mode, but not as you know them." The band had used guitars in songs as early as 1982 with their single "Get the Balance Right!", but this was the first guitar-forward single the band had released.
"Personal Jesus" is written in the key of F minor with a tempo of 130 beats per minute in time.
After recording "Personal Jesus" in Milan, the band moved to Puk Recording Studios in Denmark to work on the rest of the album.

Promotion and release

"Personal Jesus" was released on 29 August 1989 by Mute Records in the UK, Sire Records/Warner Bros. Records in the US and Liberation Records in Australia. In the UK, the single was released on a wide variety of formats: 7" single, a gatefold 7" single and a 12" and limited 12" single. Remixes across the releases of the song and its B-side, "Dangerous", were made by François Kevorkian, Mark Ellis, and Daniel Miller.
To support the single, a personal ad was placed in newspapers and magazines in some regions that asked "Do you need your own Personal Jesus?" and people who dialed the 1-800 number in the ad heard a clip of the song; some British newspapers such as the Aberdeen Evening News and Nottingham Evening Post refused to play the ads, and London's The Standard only relented when it was pointed out that they had already run similar advertisements for Billy Graham. The band was enthusiastic about the song, but had low expectations for its release, with both Gore and band member Andy Fletcher suggesting the song would struggle for airplay in the US given its religious theme. The band had two of its song previously censored by radio stations due to their lyrical content, "Master and Servant" and "Blasphemous Rumours", both released in 1984.
"Personal Jesus" went on to become Warner Bros' best-selling 12" single of all time up to that point, surpassing releases by artists such as Prince and Madonna. The single was successful enough that its B-side, "Dangerous", hit number 13 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart itself. By 2006, "Personal Jesus" had sold a million copies, only surpassed by their follow-up single, "Enjoy the Silence".

Video

The video for the song was directed by frequent Depeche Mode collaborator Anton Corbijn, shot in the Tabernas Desert of Almería, in Spain, the same village where Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns were shot decades earlier. The shots of the band dressed as cowboys harkened to the Wild West, and shots of women that alluded to the location being a brothel, alongside "suggestive" mouth movements by Gore, led to MTV to censor the video. "Personal Jesus" was one of the first colorized videos the director made for the band.
The video appears on The Videos 86>98, The Best of Depeche Mode Volume 1 and Video Singles Collection.

Critical reception

David Giles from Music Week wrote: "Their first release for over two years, and hardly a radical style departure. Stark and foreboding, and still employing the distinctive technique of vocal harmonies an octave apart. Strong enough to go top five, but fast losing ground to the Belgium beat experimentalists." Stuart Maconie of the New Musical Express magazine wrote that Depeche Mode were "the most subversive singles band of the decade... make criminally brilliant pop records about God, death, crazy sex and alienation" and called the song "a hit".

Impact and legacy

In 2011, Slant Magazine listed the song at number 81 in their ranking of "The 100 Best Singles of the 1990s", writing: "Depeche Mode's gimmick is one that, after years of repetition, seems ingeniously flimsy, bundling angst and spiritual frustration with sex and pouty gloom. 'Personal Jesus' has escaped the mustiness that has enveloped most of the band's material not by flouting these tactics, but by embodying them so well. Bolstered by Dave Gahan's repeated imprecation to 'reach out and touch faith', the vocals seem perched on a neutral point between the completely earnest and the bitterly sarcastic, turning what could have been another flat religious diatribe into a thinly dual-tiered assessment of devotion and self-absorption." In 2017, Billboard ranked "Personal Jesus" second behind only "Enjoy the Silence" on a list of their "20 Best Depeche Mode Songs".
The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd's lead vocalist John Lydon commented on the track: "it's a serious problem for me, all this technology. The people who've used it best would be Depeche Mode. 'Your own Personal Jesus!' Bloody 'ell mate, they got it! They were using the Casiotone effect and they wrapped a song around it, but they didn't let it dictate to the song. That's another tune I just absolutely love I was so impressed with the bravery of attempting such a subject matter."

Other releases

"Personal Jesus" has appeared on every Depeche Mode compilations released since 1989: The Singles 86>98, Remixes 81–04, The Best of Depeche Mode Volume 1, and Remixes 2: 81–11. Live versions of the song performed in concert have appeared on Devotional, One Night in Paris, Touring the Angel: Live in Milan, Tour of the Universe: Barcelona 20/21.11.09, Live in Berlin and Spirits in the Forest.

Track listings

All songs were written by Martin L. Gore.
  • UK 7-inch and cassette single; US cassette single
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 3:43
  2. "Dangerous" – 4:20
  • UK 7-inch single—gatefold sleeve
  • UK 12-inch and mini-CD single
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 5:51
  2. "Dangerous" – 5:24
  3. "Personal Jesus" – 3:26
  • UK limited-edition 12-inch and mini-CD single
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 7:47
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 5:32
  3. "Dangerous" – 5:34
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 3:43
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 5:43
  3. "Dangerous" – 5:35
  4. "Personal Jesus" – 7:19
  5. "Personal Jesus" – 3:26
  6. "Dangerous" – 5:22
  7. "Personal Jesus" – 5:30
  8. "Dangerous" – 4:19
  • '''US maxi-cassette single'''

    Charts

Weekly charts

Chart Peak
position

Year-end charts

Certifications

"Personal Jesus 2011"

"Personal Jesus 2011" is the preceding single to the remix compilation album Remixes 2: 81–11. The digital single was released in the UK on 18 April 2011 and a day later in the US. It was released on CD and vinyl on 30 May 2011.

Track listings

CD
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 3:57
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 5:57
  3. "Personal Jesus" – 7:26
  4. "Personal Jesus" – 5:24
  5. "Personal Jesus" – 6:25
12" vinyl
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 5:54
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 5:22
  3. "Personal Jesus" – 3:56
  4. "Personal Jesus" – 7:25
  5. "Personal Jesus" – 6:25
Digital download
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 3:56
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 3:27
Beatport Exclusive digital download
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 7:26
  2. "Never Let Me Down Again" – 7:01
Promo CD
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 3:57
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 3:27
  3. "Personal Jesus" – 5:57
  4. "Personal Jesus" – 7:26
  5. "Personal Jesus" – 5:24
  6. "Personal Jesus" – 6:25
iTunes Store
  1. "Personal Jesus" – 5:57
  2. "Personal Jesus" – 7:26
  3. "Personal Jesus" – 5:24
  4. "Personal Jesus" – 5:56

    Charts

Johnny Cash version

In 2002, American country singer Johnny Cash covered "Personal Jesus" for his sixty-seventh studio album American IV: The Man Comes Around. For the song, Rick Rubin asked Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante to re-work an acoustic version of the song, which featured a simple acoustic riff that stripped down the song to a blues style. "That's probably the most evangelical song ever recorded," said Cash, "I don't know that the writer ever meant it to be that, but that's what it is."
In 2017, Depeche Mode's lead vocalist Dave Gahan said about Cash covering the song, "I was in the studio recording a solo album, Hourglass, and Martin rang me because he'd heard news that Johnny Cash wanted to cover it, and he was kind of umming and ahhing about it, whether to give permission, and I was like 'What are you, crazy? That's like Elvis asking, of course, you let him do it!' And he was like 'Oh yes, well, I guess,' in his very Martin sort of way." He concluded, "And it's a great version, just fantastic. But it really propelled the song to another dimension. Our version is our version, and it always changes a little bit live, the way it swings, what you do with it. And you can do a lot with it because it's a great rock & roll song."