Speak to a Higher Power: The unique advertisements Depeche Mode placed to promote ‘Personal Jesus’
With the command of “Reach out and touch faith”, Depeche Mode invoked religion and, in turn, garnered controversy with their 1989 single, ‘Personal Jesus’.
As the band’s principal songwriter, Martin Gore was no stranger to centring subversive subject matter in his lyrics. Depeche Mode’s songbook had questioned religion, tackled addiction, explored the spectrum of sexuality and more. As keyboardist Andy Fletcher once described, speaking to Record Maker in 1990, “We wouldn’t say our songs are controversial. They do cause controversy, but Martin [Gore] would say all he does is write about life.”
Now, Gore was turning the focus to religion once again, but this time, asking how Depeche Mode could possibly dissect a new, dangerous form of devotion that they had somehow become familiar with in the whirlwind of fame.
At the band’s request, Gore assembled the bones of the song with a simple demo that featured him playing the melody on an acoustic guitar and tapping the beat with his foot. Lyrically, he was inspired to write the story of ‘Personal Jesus’ after reading Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, a chronicle of her life and marriage to Elvis Presley.
“It’s a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone, to give you hope and care,” Gore explained to Spin in 1990. “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.”
Gore began to contemplate how this dynamic is, in its own way, universal. “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?”, he pondered. Fame, power and religion, particularly in the lyrics to ‘Personal Jesus’, become one, forming a twisted view of love and devotion that is all-consuming.
The band wanted to lead with ‘Personal Jesus’ as the single for their new era and its album, Violator, believing the song to evoke a central theme of: “Here’s Depeche Mode, but not as you know them.”
Indeed, ‘Personal Jesus’ is the peak of their confrontation of life’s grit, holding a lens to what hides behind hedonism and glamour. The song spotlights a yearning for a salvation that cannot be obtained and the emptiness that comes when promises are not kept, merging religion and sexuality in a question of just how far devoutness will go.
‘Personal Jesus’ is centred on another command, heard in the repeated verses: “Feeling unknown and you’re all alone / Flesh and bone by the telephone / Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer.” It begs the image of someone exhausted to the point of desperation, searching for an unknown saviour, and it is one that Depeche Mode leaned into when promoting ‘Personal Jesus’.
To market the song, the band teased its release by placing personal advertisements in regional newspapers and magazines: a simple black box that read “Your own PERSONAL JESUS,” with a phone number underneath. Fans could call not to confess their sins, but to hear a snippet of the song before anyone else. Some publications refused to run the advertisement at all, citing its religious content, and it caused a level of controversy among readers.
But Depeche Mode’s surprising tactic worked: when ‘Personal Jesus’ was finally released in August 1989, it would reach number 13 on the UK charts and became the first of theirs to enter the US Top 40 since 1984’s ‘People Are People’.
Was ‘Personal Jesus’ blasphemous? To some, yes. But to most, the song was a radicalisation of what it meant to preach devotion to someone and something, a central theme that Depeche Mode tackled best.
