Personal Jesus

A guitar-forward single inspired by Elvis Presley that became Depeche Mode's first US gold-certified single.

"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 (1990), in August 1989 by Mute Records. It reached No. 13 on the UK singles chart and No. 28 on the US Billboard Hot 10. 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. The accompanying music video was directed by Anton Corbijn and filmed in Spain. 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 (1985) by Priscilla Presley.

Quick Facts

Artist

Depeche Mode

Album

Violator

B-side

Dangerous

Released

29 August 1989

Recorded

1989

Studio

Logic (Milan)

Genre

Synth-pop
synth-rock
blues rock
alternative rock
dance-rock

Length

4:56 (album version)
3:43 (7-inch version)
5:48 (12-inch version)

Lore & Background

The band had asked songwriter Martin Gore to bring less complete demos to the recording sessions for Violator, as in the past he'd brought nearly-complete demos which had limited the band's ability to improvise. Accordingly, Gore brought in a very simple demo for "Personal Jesus," which he played by tapping the beat with his foot while playing the melody on an acoustic guitar. 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 "Get the Balance Right!", but this was the first guitar-forward single the band had released. 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.

Reader's Guide

"Personal Jesus" is written in the key of F♯ minor with a tempo of 130 beats per minute in 12/8 time. 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 song has been covered by numerous artists, including Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson. In 2004, it was ranked No. 368 in Rolling Stone's 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.

Did You Know?

The single became Warner Bros' best-selling 12-inch single of all time up to that point, surpassing releases by Prince and Madonna.
The B-side, "Dangerous," hit number 13 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart itself.