Jane Remover’s Royal Blue Walls is one of the most important songs I have heard in my life. The song is a non-album single released on June 27th, 2022, and it was the first song released under her alias Jane Remover, as well as her first musical output since debuting with the album Frailty, which came out in late 2021. The song signified a change for her, both musically and personally. The lyrics and context detail the anxiety of coming out as a trans woman, with the intention of being able to move on from her past musically in the eyes of her fans and those closest to her. The lyrics contain many rhetorical devices in order to artistically and accurately describe the dreadful feelings she was experiencing, primarily through use of eloquent metaphors and intriguing anaphoras.
 Jane Remover is an artist born in Newark, New Jersey, who has one of the most eclectic discographies of the decade, throughout 2020, she released many songs under the pseudonym Dltzk (pronounced Delete Zeke), gaining some traction in the Digicore scene, primarily through her song What’s my age again (Bugara). After these sporadic singles, in early 2021, she released her first EP, titled Teen Week. Adequately titled, the songs contain angsty emo-ridden lyrics loosely describing feelings of dysphoria and the dread of becoming older. Although many of the themes seem immature retrospectively, it received a 7.2 from Pitchfork, which helped broaden Jane’s stake in experimental music scenes online. (Sundaresan) That same year, she put out her debut album, Frailty, which included similar motifs to Teen Week, simply with a more refined lyrical palette, accompanied by more mature production. The debut received mass acclaim in underground music scenes, getting positive reactions from many music publications and being featured on several end of year lists.
 After the acclaim that the album received, Jane went on a quasi-hiatus, recovering from the overwhelming feedback, only to have her first proper interview in early 2022 by Pitchfork. In the article she discusses her imposter syndrome, saying “I would be lying if I said I didn’t doubt Frailty like once a week, thinking, This album is not good enough for coverage whatsoever.” (Nast) as well as her uncomfortableness with her past work, which bleeds well into her next release, which was Royal Blue Walls. The track was her first release under the alias Jane Remover, and served as an effort to have better self-expression and distance herself from her childhood works, saying “The best way to figure out who you really are is through honest self-expression and I’d prefer to start anew.” (Hussey) This song was her first song under the alias Jane Remover, which I believe to be an equivalent to her previous alias of “Delete Zeke”, which seems almost like an example of chiasmus, as the two names are quite similar in terms of the message that they send, though one is more comfortable for the artist.
 The song uses many different rhetorical devices to properly articulate its point. One of the first is analepsis, by calling back to when she was younger, and the thoughts she had relating to feelings of dysphoria then, saying “Fourteen, I told myself that–At the turn of the decade I'd call it quits”. This lyric seems to say that her idea of coming out had been thought out for a long time, and had been weighing her down, both mentally and physically, which is expanded upon by the metaphor in the next line, “...he sat pretty at the bottom of the pool” articulating that her true self was lying dormant throughout her life. The chorus, which comes just a few lines after, begins with an immediate use of metaphors through the lyric “Tore off my mouth, I prayed the birds sang my name”. The term “tore off my mouth”, is used to describe the act of speaking impulsively, without thinking, which Jane uses to articulate her desire to simply be understood, rather than putting her emotions out there. The phrase “prayed the birds sang my name”, ties in with the last lyric of the chorus, “...I woke up in your outfit and my life's still the same” expressing that even after getting the change that she longed for, Jane cannot feel content because she knows that she must hide her identity from certain people.
  The second verse goes into more detail about Jane’s discomfort with the people around her, echoing wishes of the people around her accepting her identity, or, with lines like “Said he's not worth the harm but you still got his number”, at least wanting her parents to understand her discomfort. The line “And on the TV he sits down and watches…When they say I'm a scary girl” continues to explain the situations that she had to live under before coming out. After the verse explains how she felt anxious, it repeats the chorus from earlier, this time with much more grandiose instrumentation, which is a good example of the rhetorical device of anaphora. The chorus repeating seems to express that no matter how close she comes to moving on and coming out, nothing will be resolved until she fully accepts herself.
  The third verse acts almost as a resolve for the song, beginning with her desperate attempt to find solace in her body without coming out. This is exemplified with the lyrics, “I'm no stranger to the sink or the razor”, followed by the anaphora of “The hair on my legs and my arms” which repeats three times over. The next line, which discusses waking up, “denting (her) face”, this and other forms of self harm, are some of the most common outbursts of dysphoria that transgender people suffer from. (Morris and Galupo 296) The verse ends with “And I deal my own cards now… but somehow I’m still never satisfied satisfied satisfied.”, alongside a pseudo-appeal to emotions, repeating “I’m a no good liar”, before ending the entire song with “And I die where I stand …Tell my mother I'm not coming home” which leaves the listener on an uncertain note.
  In conclusion, Jane Remover’s song Royal Blue Walls is a moving and emotional masterpiece in feelings of uncertainty and dysphoria. It achieves its message through many uses of rhetorical devices, and details feelings of deep discomfort with very eloquent writing. The writer, Jane, spent many years waiting to express her feelings in such a meaningful way, and it shows in the song. The elements of repetition and metaphors lead to a song that fills the listener with both sorrow and optimism, as those are the feelings that you can tell the writer was experiencing at the time. Her music after this single proved to be equally as moving and impactful, and this song serving as the “rebirth” of her as an artist leads to a grander context in her later work.

Written 3/9/25 for an Eng-101 Class.