Personal Jesus [Single Version] Lyrics
Reach out and touch faith
[Chorus: Dave Gahan]
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
[Verse: Dave Gahan]
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
[Refrain: Dave Gahan]
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
[Chorus: Dave Gahan]
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus (Your own)
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
[Verse: Dave Gahan]
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
[Refrain: Dave Gahan]
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith
(Reach out, reach out)
Reach out and touch faith
[Outro: Dave Gahan]
Reach out and touch faith
About
Personal Jesus is a song by English electronic music band Depeche Mode. It was released as the lead single from their seventh studio album, Violator (1990), in 1989. It reached No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single was their first to make the US Top 40 since 1984’s People Are People, and was their first gold-certified single in the US (quickly followed by its successor, Enjoy the Silence). In Germany, Personal Jesus is one of the band’s longest-charting songs, staying on the singles chart for 23 weeks.
In 2004, Personal Jesus 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. The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Johnny Cash in 2002 and Marilyn Manson in 2004.
Background and composition:
In mid-1989, the band began recording in Milan with record producer Flood. The result of this session was the single Personal Jesus, which featured a catchy bluesy riff and drum-based sound, radically different from anything the band had released thus far. Although 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 and And Then… from Construction Time Again and Here is the House from Black Celebration featured an acoustic guitar), it was the first time a guitar was used as a dominant instrument in a Depeche Mode song. The song was inspired by the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley.
Personal Jesus is written in the key of F♯ minor with a tempo of 194 beats per minute in 12/8 time.
Promotion and release:
Prior to its release, advertisements were placed in the personal columns of regional newspapers in the UK with the words Your own personal Jesus. Later, the ads included a phone number one could dial to hear the song. The ensuing controversy helped propel the single to No. 13 on the UK charts, becoming one of Depeche Mode’s biggest sellers. 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 Bros. history.
Personal Jesus had 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.
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 (Dave Gahan), the cassette (Andy 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 photos are available plus one photo of the full group with Martin hugging the woman.
Critical reception:
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.
Robert Smith of The Cure listed Personal Jesus as one of his 30 favorite songs from the 1980s.
Music video:
Anton Corbijn directed the music video for *Personal Jesus" and is his first Depeche Mode video in color. It features the band on a ranch (suggested to appear as a brothel), filmed 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.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 11.Somebody (Remix)
- 21.Little 15
- 24.Personal Jesus [Single Version]
- 28.I Feel You
- 31.One Caress
- 36.Useless (Remix)
- 41.Goodnight Lovers
- 43.Precious
- 45.Suffer Well
- 47.Martyr
- 53.Heaven
- 58.Soothe My Soul