Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus (Techni-ka Remix)

"Personal Jesus" is a song from the 1990 album Violator by Depeche Mode. It was released as a lead single on 29 August 1989.

Songwriter Martin Gore described how the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley inspired the song in an interview for Spin magazine:

It's a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It's about how Elvis [Presley] 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. We play these god-like parts for people but no one is perfect, and that's not a very balanced view of someone is it?

Johnny Cash (who covered the song in 2002) offered his interpretation of the song in an interview for NPR:

It's a very fine, fine evangelical song, probably the most evangelical gospel song I ever recorded, although I don't know if the writer meant it to be that, but that's what it is. It's where you find your comfort, your counsel, your shoulder to lean on, your hand to hold on to your Personal Jesus.

Alan Wilder wrote in an editorial on Shunt, the official Recoil website:

The track itself was a significant move forward for the group but still retained elements of [Depeche Mode's] former experimental self. For example, the main 'stomp' was a recording of 2 or 3 people jumping up and down on flight cases working alongside Martin's John Lee Hooker guitar riff and the Kraftwerk-style synth parts.

Gore described initial doubts about the song's potential for commercial success prior to its record-breaking release in BONG 37, 1998:

This song was our first experiment we had working with Flood and François Kevorkian, and we were really unsure about how that whole relationship would work. We were really happy with the song and we realised that it was a potential single, but we didn’t have any idea of the mass appeal that it would have. We thought that it was the sort of thing that we liked but the radio programmers would hate, and we’d be lucky if it reached no. 25 – it was one of those sort of feelings we had in the studio about this song. We were especially worried about America, because the moment you mention the word Jesus in the title, you’re asking for trouble, but the single eventually turned out to be Warner Bros.’ biggest selling 12” of all time.

Vince Clarke stated in a 2001 interview for BBC:

To me, "Personal Jesus" is like a rock sound, I suppose. It's not really like a typical American rock. I think it's far more clever and imaginative than that. If you told me that there would be a record like Violator, that they might have written Violator, 20 years ago, I would not have believed you. Going for that amount of time, then they're a band that have had a huge influence.

Musician Charlie Marchino, who was at Logic Studios during the recording of "Personal Jesus", describes the experience in an interview for Libero Quotidiano:

I was at Logic Studios where Depeche Mode was recording Violator, and one day, I am playing ping pong with one of them. They play and challenge each other with ping pong every day. But then they are recording "Personal Jesus" and I am wondering how they make the drumming loop in a military marching style at the beginning of the song. I am wondering what instrumentation they are using, what technological effects. So I follow after them and my jaw drops. They are on the metallic stairwell, and using its [railing], they are beating their feet on the staircase, all together, tum, tum, tu tu tum. Record and mix. Unbelievable.