Personal Jesus

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"Personal Jesus"
Single by Depeche Mode
from the album Violator
B-side	"Dangerous"
Released	August 29, 1989
Format	Vinyl record (7" and 12") CD
Recorded	May 1989
Genre	Rock, Alternative rock, New Wave
Length	3:45 (single version) 5:51 (12" version) 4:55 (album version)
Label	Mute Records
Writer(s)	Martin Gore
Producer	Depeche Mode and Flood
Certification	Gold (RIAA)
Depeche Mode singles chronology
"Everything Counts (Live)" (1989) "Personal Jesus" (1989) "Enjoy the Silence" (1990)

"Personal Jesus" is Depeche Mode's twenty-third UK single, released on August 29, 1989, and the first single from the album Violator. It was written by Martin L. Gore. Since then, the title song has been covered by numerous artists. Inspired by the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, it was the first hit from the album, reaching #13 on the UK Singles Chart and #28 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 2004, "Personal Jesus" was ranked #368 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,^[1] and in September 2006 it was voted as one of the "100 Greatest Songs Ever" in Q magazine.

[edit] Inspiration

The song was inspired by the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley. According to songwriter Martin Gore:

It's a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It's about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody's heart is like a god in some way, and that's not a very balanced view of someone, is it?^[2]

[edit] Depeche Mode recording

In mid-1989, the band began recording in Milan with record producer François Kervorkian. The result of this session was the single "Personal Jesus", which featured a catchy, drum-based sound, radically different from anything the band had released thus far. The song became a big hit across the world, and is one of Depeche Mode's most successful songs, along with the following single, "Enjoy the Silence". It was the first time the guitar was used as the main instrument on a Depeche Mode song. The single took the world by storm and featured more advertising than usual with Depeche Mode, with magazine ads and a telephone campaign (people could call a number seen on magazine ads to hear the song over the phone). In addition, the single was particularly successful commercially thanks to the fact that it was released six months prior to the album it would later appear on. Up to that point, it was the best selling 12" single in Warner Brothers history.^[3]

"Personal Jesus" has a plethora of remixes, almost unprecedented for Depeche Mode at the time. While most other Depeche Mode singles prior to "Personal Jesus" usually had band-made extended mixes, Depeche Mode started to invite more DJs and mixers to the fold, which would become the mainstay for all future Depeche Mode singles. François Kevorkian (who did the mixing for the Violator album, in general) mixed the single version, the "Holier Than Thou Approach" and the "Pump Mix", while producer Flood mixed the "Acoustic" version and the "Telephone Stomp Mix" as well as the single version and "Sensual Mix" of the single's B-side "Dangerous", a more disco-electronic track. The "Hazchemix" and "Hazchemix Edit" of "Dangerous" were mixed by Daniel Miller.

The back-cover of "Personal Jesus" features one of the band members and the back-side of a naked woman. The band member she is with depends on whether it is the 7" Vinyl (Martin Gore), the 12" Vinyl (David Gahan), the Cassette (Andrew Fletcher), or the original CD (Alan Wilder). On some copies she does not appear at all, such as the 2004 CD re-release, and on promo copies. On some limited releases, like the GBong17, all four pictures are available. The Anton Corbijn-directed music video for "Personal Jesus" is his first Depeche Mode video in colour, and features the band in a ranch, placed in the Tabernas Desert of Almería, in Spain. MTV edited out some suggestive mouth movements of Martin Gore during the bridge and replaced it with some other footage from the video.

[edit] Track listings

All songs written by Martin L. Gore

[edit] Charts

[edit] Cover versions and samples

• Tarakany!, the veteran Russian punk band, covered the song on Depesha dlya Depeche Mode, the 1998 Depeche Mode tribute album by artists from the former Soviet Union.
• Gravity Kills covered the song on their 2002 LP Superstarved.
• Lollipop Lust Kill cover this song on their My So Called Knife album, also in 2002.
• Johnny Cash covered the song in 2002 on his penultimate album American IV: The Man Comes Around.
• Hungarian nu-jazz band Toy Division covered the song on their 2003 album Budapest Resonance.
• A Belgian band called Insekt covered this song on their 2004 album Ohrwürmer.
• Marilyn Manson's 2004 cover version of "Personal Jesus" appears on the band's best-of compilation, Lest We Forget: The Best of, and was that album's lead single.
• Tori Amos did a live cover of this song on her 2005 Original Sinsuality/Summer of Sin Tour.
• UK girl group Sugababes sampled this song in the track "It Ain't Easy" from their 2005 album Taller in More Ways.
• Richard Cheese covered the song in 2005 on his album I'd Like a Virgin and a more Christmas-themed remix on 2006's Silent Nightclub.
• The song is heavily sampled on "Beware Of The Dog", a 2006 single by British R&B singer Jamelia.
• The Dixie Hummingbirds and David Gogo covered the song in 2006.
• Welsh indie rock band The Automatic have performed the song, in a style similar to Manson's.
• A Spanish version of the song, titled "Tu único Dios (Personal Jesus)", was recorded by Acusicas for a Depeche Mode tribute album in 2006.
• A Colombian heavy metal band Koyi k utho also did a cover of this song.
• This song was remixed by Dirty South.
• German synthpop band And One covers this song in the middle of their live performances of their song "Wasted".
• Ian Moore did a medley of Personal Jesus and his own song "Muddy Jesus" Live on earlier tours.
• The Christian goth-rock band Rackets and Drapes has covered the song on their album Trick or Treat.
• The rapper Apathy sampled much of the song in his own song of the same name on the Where's Your Album?!! album.
• The German DJ Boys Noize made a remix of the song in 2006.
• "Personal Jesus" appeared on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack, playing on alternative station Radio X.
• The song was sampled in Hilary Duff's "Reach Out", which she performed on her 2007 tour, the Dignity tour and was later featured in her greatest hits album, Best of Hilary Duff.^[13]

[edit] Marilyn Manson cover

"Personal Jesus"
Single by Marilyn Manson
from the album Lest We Forget: The Best of
Released	October 4, 2004
Format	Vinyl record 7", 10", CD
Recorded	2004
Genre	Industrial metal
Length	4:06
Label	Interscope Records
Producer	Marilyn Manson and Tim Skold
Marilyn Manson singles chronology
(s)AINT (2004) Personal Jesus (2004) Against All Gods Remix (2005)

Marilyn Manson's 2004 cover version of "Personal Jesus" appears on the band's best-of compilation, Lest We Forget: The Best of, and was that album's lead single. It was recorded by Marilyn Manson with instrumentation and arrangement by Tim Skold at Manson's studio, Doppelherz Blood Treatment Facility, and mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent, a veteran producer who had also frequently worked with Depeche Mode.

The cover does not deviate in any large degree from Depeche Mode's original version, apart from additional guitar distortion. The single was accompanied by a music video directed by Manson and Nathan "Karma" Cox, which features the band members in Tableaux Vivants accompanied by rear-projection images depicting various images of American and international political figures such as John F. Kennedy, Joseph Stalin, Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush.

Like the original version, this 2004 cover was also remixed by other artists. The "Personal Jesus Rude Photo Motor Mix" was produced by Felix Da Housecat, Brian Black and Olivier Grasset, and appears as a b-side on the vinyl versions of the single.

Manson's version of the song is also used as the theme song for professional wrestlers Austin Aries, "Miracle" Mike James and Necro Butcher

[edit] Notable appearances of the song

• It was included in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack on the fictional radio station Radio X.
• The distinctive chimes portion is often used as a buffer segment on National Public Radio.
• The Johnny Cash cover version is briefly heard in the Ben Stein movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Single information from the official Depeche Mode web site
• "Personal Jesus" lyrics