G major · Camelot 9B · 82 BPM
Jane Says
by Jane's Addiction
- 82
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 43
- Danceability
- 4
- Acousticness
When "Jane Says" appeared as a promotional single from Nothing's Shocking in 1988, it gave Jane's Addiction their first entry on the Alternative Songs chart, where it peaked at number six. The track had already existed in a rougher form a year earlier, released in semi-live format on the band's self-titled 1987 album, the recording that caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records. For the studio version on Nothing's Shocking, the band re-recorded it and added steel drums, an instrument absent from the original.
The Jane of the title was Jane Bainter, Perry Farrell's ex-housemate and the namesake of the band itself. In a 2001 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bainter confirmed parts of the song's story and corrected others. She had been dating an abusive man named Sergio, and she did wear wigs, but she stated she never sold her body for sex. By the time of that interview she had been clean for eight years and had eventually made it to Spain.
Musically, the song uses only two chords for most of its length and abandons standard verse-chorus structure in favor of three verses and a bridge in a traditional AABA form, each verse closing with the repeated refrain "I'm gonna kick tomorrow." Stephen Perkins played the steel drums that replaced the bongos of the first recording. The song frequently ends the band's concerts.
Jane Says runs at 82 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.93 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 732 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.