Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus Lyrics
Send this Ringtone to your CellReach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith
Listen to "Personal Jesus"
Song details
"Personal Jesus" is Depeche Mode's twenty-third UK single, released on August 29, 1989, and the first single from the album Violator. The single reached #13 on the UK Singles Chart and #28 on the Billboard Hot 100. Since then, the title song has been covered by numerous artists including Marilyn Manson, Jerry Williams, G&G and Johnny Cash.
In 2004, "Personal Jesus" was ranked #368 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and in September 2006 it was voted as one of the "100 Greatest Songs Ever" in Q magazine.
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?".
In mid-1989, the band began recording in Milan with record producer François Kevorkian. 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". Whilst not the first Depeche Mode song to feature guitar parts (Behind the Wheel and their cover of Route 66 featured a guitar; Love in Itself from Construction Time Again featured an acoustic guitar), it was the first time a guitar was used as a dominant instrument in 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.
"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", the "Pump Mix", and the lesser-known "Kazan Cathedral Mix" (which was not available on any of the singles), 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.
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