The Diary of Jane
by Breaking Benjamin
- 83
- BPM
- Bb minor
- Key
- 3A
- Camelot
- 40
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Benjamin Burnley had been watching a lot of Forensic Files when the idea for "The Diary of Jane" came to him. One episode covered a Jane Doe who washed up on shore and was buried with no story, Burnley decided to invent one for her. He said in 2019 that once he started writing, it grew into more than that.
Breaking Benjamin released the song on June 6, 2006, as the lead single from their third album, Phobia. It was the most-added track at Rock, Modern Rock and Active Rock radio, and the fastest-added single in the history of Hollywood Records, ahead of Queen. It debuted at number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number two on the Mainstream Rock chart. By June 2006 it was playing on more than 100 American radio stations.
Ryan Smith directed the video. A woman named Jane Bryan, played by Sarah Mather of American Idol, finds every mirror in her house missing, and the video ends with Burnley placing a rose on her tombstone to reveal she drowned in the bathtub. Jane Bryan was also a film star of the 1930s and 1940s who appeared in We Are Not Alone, the title of the band's second album.
The Diary of Jane runs at 83 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 2.89 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 723 ms. It is in Bb minor, Camelot 3A, which shares its notes with Db major and mixes cleanly with Eb minor and F minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.