Janie's Got a Gun
by Aerosmith
- 115
- BPM
- F major
- Key
- 7B
- Camelot
- 61
- Danceability
- 10
- Acousticness
Steven Tyler found the main riff of "Janie's Got a Gun" on his keyboard, set to a low tone. Bassist Tom Hamilton made the bassline. The guitars and drum parts were configured later. Tyler wrote the lyrics, which took him nine months. Joe Perry played the guitar solo, which sits over the main riff and rhythmic clapping.
The song tells of a young woman who kills her sexually abusive father. Tyler has said the idea came after he saw a Time magazine article on handgun deaths in the United States. Stories he heard in drug rehabilitation from another addict who had been abused by her father also fed into it. Aerosmith released it as the second single from Pump in November 1989. It reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Album Rock Tracks chart in 1990. It went to number one in Australia, the first of two there for the band. It won the 1990 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
David Fincher directed the video, with Kristin Dattilo as Janie. In 2015 Tyler started Janie's Fund, which raises money for counseling, trauma care, housing and medical care for troubled young women.
Janie's Got a Gun runs at 115 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.09 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 522 ms. It is in F major, Camelot 7B, which shares its notes with D minor and mixes cleanly with Bb major and C major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.