Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Jesus Jones and "The Devil You Know"
Jesus Jones hit a home run with "Right Here, Right Now." Their follow-up, "The Devil You Know," feels more like a bunt foul ball with two strikes, which is to say, it's terrible.
Jesus Jones - “The Devil You Know”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 6 weeks (January 23 to February 27, 1993)
Previous Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 hit: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin - “Not Sleeping Around”
Next Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 hit: Belly - “Feed The Tree”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Whitney Houston - “I Will Always Love You” (14 total weeks, beginning 11/28/92)
I really wasn’t looking forward to this one. I just knew, deep in my soul, this was going to be one of those songs I was going to hate before I even heard it for the first time. I didn’t want to hate it, mind you, but I just knew it. And knowing my audience, there’s going to be about a dozen or more of you who are going to gush over this, so I feel bad on that level pooping all over this song. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, as the saying goes.
It’s amazing to me how easy it is to go from loving one track to despising the next. For me, I can’t think of a song that better encapsulates my early ‘90s experience than “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones, the #1 Modern Rock Tracks hit (#2 on the Billboard Hot 100) that I talked about at length back in January 2024. That song topped the MRT chart for a reasonably long five weeks back in February and March of 1991, and is probably one of my all-time favorite songs of the era. It’s a sweeping ode to living through a seismic shift in the geopolitical order, and coming out the other side with a rush of optimism for the future.
Having spent the better part of two years reviewing songs from the era before my Musical Awakening™️ here on the ol’ Substack, I’ve learned a lot from my readership. One of those lessons: A diverse readership will find happiness and good memories in songs I can’t stand. So I’ll need to lean on my faithful followers to help me figure out how “The Devil You Know” not only reached #1 on the MRT charts for Jesus Jones, but how it surpassed “Right Here, Right Now” by topping the chart for SIX weeks just two years later.
(Note: The music video I linked below has a fun intro from an MTV2 promotion where they played every music video from A to Z. Judging by the “new” songs they referenced in the interstitial, I’m going to guess this series ran sometime in the latter half of 1999. The video for “The Devil You Know” starts at the 40-second mark.)
To be sure, the song does presage the future coming of “industrial rock” and “electropop” and “techno,” and there’s a subset of music lovers that will eat this up every time. I listen to this song and I hear the DNA of acts like Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie. I like a lot of those “latter-day” artists, and maybe it’s because their sound feels more polished and alive than “The Devil You Know.” This track feels like a test run for better things to come.
That’s OK. I can’t begrudge anyone for being the artist who influences a generation of better artists. You can say a lot of things about bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s who clearly influenced what came in the ‘90s and ‘00s, but that doesn’t always make that influential band’s music good universally. So it goes with “The Devil You Know.”
With this track, the band lives up to what they’re driving at in the song’s lyrics, which reference the titular “devil you know” and looking for a way to avoid the trappings of what the narrator knows in an attempt to move forward into something new and uncertain. If the song is a mirror of the band’s creative process, one could interpret this as Jesus Jones saying it might be easier to stick to the path that led to its success and to keep writing and creating music like “Right Here, Right Now.” But, to allow themselves to become locked into a particular sound could be destructive creatively, which in turn leads them to consider the alterations to their sound in their follow-up album “Perverse.”
All of this is to say that Jesus Jones did something remarkably different with their music in 1993, and it did not receive universal praise despite its initial wave of popularity. Longtime New York-based music review magazine Trouser Press noted in a review on its website that “Perverse” was terrible, even though it proved to be a landmark production:
“Then there’s ‘Perverse,’ which enjoys the historical distinction of being the first album recorded entirely (except for Edwards’ vocals) on computer. For all its sonically dense, in-your-face attack, this is one floppy-disc fusillade that flops. Form takes precedent over substance, and Edwards and producer Warne Livesey pump up the electronic fuzz tones and industrial guitar riffs at the expense of songs’ character. … ‘Perverse’ makes sonic rubble of Jesus Jones’ already slight virtues.” — Gary Graff and Doug Brod, for Trouser Press
It’s kind of cool that Jesus Jones created an entire album on computers long before such productions became ubiquitous and the industry standard. I can’t even imagine how many floppy disks were necessary to create an entire music album in 1992-1993, but it must have been a lot.
That’s probably the coolest thing about this song and its sound, though. Like I mentioned above, there’s something to be said for being a trend-setter, and being the influencer of acts that come after you. And I’d like to tell you there’s something redeeming about this track, but I’m just not feeling it.
I wasn’t the only one. Even though “The Devil May Know” topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart for a month and a half, it didn’t even grace the bottom rungs of the Billboard Hot 100, a hell of a dropoff from “Right Here, Right Now” and “Real Real Real,” which peaked in the top 4 of Billboard’s flagship chart. It peaked at #10 on the U.K. charts, which isn’t terrible, but nothing the band released afterwards came anywhere near the same levels of popularity on the charts.
The band’s second single off “Perverse,” titled “The Right Decision,” managed a #12 peak on the MRT charts, and honestly is a better overall track, in my opinion, than “The Devil May Know.” It’s definitely not as drab and forgettable as the album’s lead single, and even though you can’t really make out Mike Edwards’ lyrics in either song, “The Right Decision” hides this better behind riffs and sound breaks that more closely evoke memories of “Right Here, Right Now.” After that, the band would never appear again on any U.S. music charts. Though the band is still active in some form to the present day, their music has not charted anywhere worldwide since the late 20th century.
I hate being hard on bands, but want to maintain some level of honesty in my impressions of songs. I will always hold “Right Here, Right Now” in the highest esteem; I still get chills when I hear it, because it evokes a bright-eyed optimism that hits me in my soul every time it plays. With “The Devil May Know,” even though I listened to it six times during the composition of this review, I couldn’t even tell you what it sounds like if you asked me. It’s that forgettable, and I suspect you’ll quickly forget it as well, if you haven’t already. Keep reading for much more memorable songs!
Rating: 1/10
Chart Check
Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
EVERY song on this review of the charts from the six weeks Jesus Jones commanded the top spot has a claim to be the rightful #1 hit. All-time classics from Pearl Jam, Duran Duran, and R.E.M. are surrounded by solid hits from Sunscreem, Soul Asylum, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, and The The. Just a truly incredible stretch on the charts, and proof positive that sometimes these rankings don’t accurately reflect the very best music of a particular period of time.
“Man On The Moon” by R.E.M. (#2): Of all the chart travesties I’ve covered (or will cover) during the entire run of “Chart Chat,” this will go down as one of the biggest. I mean, seriously? “Man On The Moon” might not go down as one of the best R.E.M. songs of all time, but it’s in the conversation. This gem of a track from “Automatic For The People” topped out at a completely unfair #2 behind Jesus Jones. It only hit #30 on the Hot 100, which also seems low. Kudos to the band for educating us all about Andy Kaufman, though!
“Ordinary World” by Duran Duran (#2): Duran Duran never seemed to fit the mold of the Modern Rock Tracks chart. Their work in the ‘80s seemed more in tune with the pop stylings of the time, and while their early ‘90s successes were born out of rock and roll, they never made it to the top of the MRT chart. Their closest finish came in 1993 when “Ordinary World” peaked at #2 behind Jesus Jones. The track would top out at #3 on the Hot 100, the ninth of 10 top-10 hits for the band on the pop charts. This song is still a banger, and another example of a song that would have been better suited to the top than “The Devil You Know.”
“Dogs of Lust” by The The (#2): Post-punk rockers The The, a legacy U.K. band with a strong following in the U.S., topped out at #2 on the MRT charts with “Dogs of Lust,” a pretty decent low-key rock song that missed the top spot because of Jesus Jones. Unlike bands like Midnight Oil, The The brings just the right amount of harmonica in this track, and while it definitely “sounds early ‘90s,” it’s got a lot of personality and is a far better song than “The Devil You Know.”
“Love U More” by Sunscreem (#3): Tip of the hat to
of for letting the world know about this lost track from early 1993. As Mark points out in his writeup of “Love U More,” Sunscreem peaked at #3 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind Jesus Jones with this song, which Mark first describes as “a blissed-out, Pure Moods-adjacent declaration of love” before “the vibe shifts from peace to wild ecstasy. More and more instruments join the mix — including what sounds like a xylophone — until everything explodes in an up-tempo rush.” It’s not my favorite track, but it definitely captures a moment in time, and honestly probably is more deserving of #1 than Jesus Jones.“Black Gold” by Soul Asylum (#6): As I mentioned in my review of Soul Asylum’s #1 Modern Rock Tracks hit “Somebody To Shove,” I think “Black Gold” is my favorite of the hit singles off the band’s album “Grave Dancers Union.” Something about the transitions between slow rock and hard rock on this track just works for me. I’d make a solid argument for this song to be in the race for #1 on the MRT chart, but, of course, Jesus Jones had to be #1, so they couldn’t. Ah well.
“Walking Through Syrup” by Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (#13): It brings me great pleasure to feature Ned’s Atomic Dustbin in back-to-back weeks, which might be a first for “Chart Chat.” This single from “Are You Normal?”, the album that featured the band’s lone Modern Rock Tracks chart-topper “Not Sleeping Around,” topped out at #13 behind Jesus Jones, though even this probably deserved the top spot more than “The Devil You Know.”
“Black” by Pearl Jam (#20): Pearl Jam was already a breakout success by the time their record label urged them to release “Black” as an official single off their “Ten” album. Pearl Jam refused, citing the personal lyrical content of the song, and their desire to not commercialize it. Nevertheless, the song did receive a fair amount of radio airplay and managed to get to a #20 peak on the MRT chart. If Pearl Jam had promoted it to radio as a single and created a music video for it, I imagine it might have had the potential to hit #1 on the MRT charts, which would have prevented “The Devil You Know” from doing it. Alas, we’ll never know. “Black” is still a banger, though.
I had this album but have no memory of listening to this song! It's not bad but nowhere near as good as "Right Here, Right Now" and "The Right Decision." Maybe they needed to put "right" in the title: "The Devil You Know, Right?" Maybe it would have improved it's chances on the charts!
I'm not sure I've ever heard this track before. It's...okay, I guess? Production is good, but feels wasted on something that reminds me of a lead in to a sports show.
That aside, I love love loved Sunscreem's "Love U More." I had the CD single, and the B-side was a track called "Doved Up" that was sweaty, pulsing, rave classic.