Personal Jesus
When Composition of Sound performed their first show as a four-piece group on 14 June 1980 at Nicholas School, Basildon, England, UK, they probably couldn't imagine becoming one of the most prominent electronic synth-pop music groups of all time. Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher, and Vince Clarke formed COS in 1977. The band changed its name to Depeche Mode a few months after lead singer and nowadays pop icon Dave Gahan joined the group. Clarke left the band in 1981 and was replaced by Alan Wilder, who joined the band, becoming a key figure in their musical productions until 1995.
Inspired by various bands and artists like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), the Cure, Siouxsie, and the Banshees, Kraftwerk, The Human League, and Talking Heads, the music of Depeche Mode doesn't need any other introduction. So many music journalists and critics have already spent millions of words talking about them and their music. The band has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, with their perfect blend of electronic music and pop/industrial melodies.
A fundamental aspect of Depeche Mode's music is the constant experimental attitude that has driven the band's 40+ year career and has been the trademark of their production. Their music has attracted and inspired mainstream audiences, musicians, and producers for decades, making Depeche Mode one of the few musical acts to achieve the respect of both parts.
Violator (1990), the band's seventh studio album, was recorded with producer Flood. The album followed Speak & Spell (1981), A Broken Frame (1982), Construction Time Again (1983), Some Great Reward (1984), Black Celebration (1986), and Music for the Masses (1987), and it is considered their masterpiece.
Personal Jesus, the album's opening single, is one of their most enormous commercial success. This also happened because of a successful advertising strategy. Before its release, a marketing campaign was launched with advertisements placed in the personals columns of UK regional newspapers with the words "Your own personal Jesus." Later, the ads included a phone number one could dial to hear the song.
The song was recorded in Milan (Italy), where the band worked for a short period in 1989. Like many other times, Depeche Mode changed working methods for Violator.
For their previous albums, they worked on already-developed demo tapes. With Violator, Gore left most of the layering and arranging duties to Flood and Wilder.
Personal Jesus became Depeche Mode's first single to make the US Top 40 since 1984's People Are People. It was their first gold-certified single in the US, quickly followed by another single taken from the album, Enjoy the silence.
For the first time, a guitar was used as a dominant instrument in a Depeche Mode song. Personal Jesus starts with one of the most iconic guitar riffs ever. The drum machine beats and the synthesizers give the song the industrial vibe we can find in previous productions of the band. Still, its repetitive rhythm was the sampled sound of feet stomping on flight cases and then looped, treated, and mixed with electric snare and tom sounds. Other gears used by the band for the record were an EMS VCS3, a Minimoog, an Oberheim OB-8 synth, a Roland Space Echo, Manley amplifiers, and an ARP 2600 synth.
