"Jesus Built My Hotrod" is a song by American industrial metal band Ministry, released as the first single from their fifth studio album, Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs. It was written by the band's frontman Al Jourgensen, bassist Paul Barker, drummer Bill Rieflin, session keyboardist Michael Balch, and guest vocalist Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, and was co-produced by Jourgensen and Barker. An industrial metal track with a polyrhythmic structure, the also features elements of rockabilly and psychobilly, and is influenced by the Trashmen 1963 hit "Surfin' Bird", and Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood.
The song was first released as a single in November 1991, backed with the B-side "TV Song" based on lyrics by Chris Connelly; re-edited versions of both tracks were included in Psalm 69, as well as various compilation albums. The single reached No. 19 in the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart with approximately 128,000 copies as of mid-July 1992, preceding the later success of Psalm 69.
The album version of the song is in Ministry's 2001 compilation album Greatest Fits;[54] remixed and re-recorded versions appear on several Ministry compilations, including 2005's Rantology,[55][56] 2008's Cover Up,[21] 2010's Every Day Is Halloween: The Anthology/Undercover and 2011's The Very Best of Fixes and Remixes.[57] For the Rantology version, subtitled “Update Mix”, a new introduction was recorded by Haynes.[56] The song's lyrics have been supposedly recycled for Butthole Surfers' 1993 song “Some Dispute Over T-Shirt Sales”, from Independent Worm Saloon.
Notable cover versions of the song were recorded by The Bosshoss (for their 2006 album Rodeo Rodeo)[60] and Lamb of God (for 2018 cover album Legion: XX, as Burn the Priest).[61] Commenting on the Lamb of God recording, frontman Randy Blythe admitted that he didn't consider it a good idea, until he performed vocals; instead of requesting permissions for the original cut's samples, the band chose to voice these themselves.[61] The Burn the Priest version made an appearance on an episode of The Flash. Finnish band Eläkeläiset has recorded a cover version of the song in Finnish as "Niilo Yli-Vainio tervasi potkukelkkani jalakset" ("Niilo Yli-Vainio smeared the runners of my kicksled with tar").
“Jesus Built My Hotrod” was featured in the first trailer of Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 parody book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. A lyric from the spoken word intro ("Ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long") was used (without spaces) as a cheat code in the video game Sleepwalker.[62] In August 2010, the song became available for download in the Rock Band series of games.[63] The song was also featured in the 2014 Ubisoft video game, Watch Dogs, both as a song available in game, and as a backdrop for a set piece during the game's storyline; one reviewer called it a "fantastic moment".
