Rage and love: Why Jane Remover had to hit reset with ‘Revengeseekerz’

On the first day of 2025, Jane Remover decided to blow their life up. At just 21, they were already a darling of the underground digital rebellion, having dropped two albums to critical acclaim and gained a horde of adoring, attentive fans. More excitingly, towards the end of 2024, the Chicago-based musician had released a spattering of singles that signalled a sonic return to their 2021 glitch-pop EP ‘Teen Week’ – and away from their shoegaze pivot on their second LP ‘Census Designated’.

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But Jane wasn’t happy. For years, they had distanced themselves from “hyperpop” and “digicore” labels – much to the chagrin of the genre’s close-knit communities. It created a spiralling push-pull relationship where fans either believed Jane hated them or “idolised me to a point that was really uncomfortable”, as Jane tells NME. “I felt I had to set the record straight.”

So, while lying in bed and sick from alcohol poisoning, Jane posted the video link to ‘JRJRJR’, a lyrical and sonic manifestation of wiping the slate clean to establish a new identity for themselves. They shelved the “main pop girl” album they were intending to release, and instead heralded the start of a brand new record: ‘Revengeseekerz’. “It felt like I was pressing a reset button on everything,” they recall.

‘Revengeseekerz’ has been out for nearly two months when NME speaks to Jane. It’s the second day of their sold-out, two-night residency at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and their first trip outside North America. Deliriously explosive and layered, the record is more volatile than anything Jane’s done before – and the cost of its growing success remains to be seen.

“Being a famous musician, it’s all I ever wanted growing up,” Jane confesses. “I have a cult following, and it’s definitely intense. I don’t hate my fans, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that something is wrong.”

“Compared to other albums that I’ve put out in the past, I still think this album fucking rocks”

It all kicked off when Jane returned from supporting JPEGMafia on tour in late summer last year. Drama both “publicly and personally” was going down, they say, “and I couldn’t react to any of it”. On top of that, Jane was performing to rather frosty crowds; though Jane and JPEG’s fanbase overlap, “there’s some cities where they were just not fucking with me at all.”

Though they eventually adjusted, it didn’t help that Jane’s relationship to their past music has historically been fraught, with Jane elaborating: “You can tell I’m not fully confident in these songs.” So by the time Jane got around to writing their third album, “physically and career wise, I was so hungry.”

As soon as they got back from tour, they wrote ‘JRJRJR’. It’s often said that anger is a secondary emotion, and that certainly rings true for the song and the rest of ‘Revengeseekerz’. ‘JRJRJR’ documents Jane’s various struggles with their past music (“Rehearsing songs I hate in Silver Lake, trying not to cry”), their fanbase (“Do you think I’m a bitch? Cause I hear it all the time”) and ultimately, with themselves (“So should I change my name again? JR, JR, JR?”).

“I always want things to be peaceful,” Jane explains, “but there are so many things in my life I can’t control, where I almost feel like I have to give up myself and surrender. It’s partially why this album feels like a boss battle.” That theme of submission crops up again when they discuss the symbolism of the white flag in the ‘JRJRJR’ video, which is partially a metaphor for their gender journey.

Jane came out as a trans woman in 2022, but clarified earlier this year that they were nonbinary. “It’s a touchy subject, because it can be really misinterpreted,” they say carefully. “I’m not not trans, but I’m not a trans woman… It is exhausting to have to figure it out publicly in front of thousands of people, so I was like: let me make this easy for everybody. I’m whatever you want, it’s up to y’all now.”

Writing ‘JRJRJR’ compelled them to finish the rest of ‘Revengeseekerz’ – and Jane remains confident it was the record they needed to put out. “‘Revengeseekerz’ stirs the pot like a popstar,” they justify. “I perform these songs like a rockstar. And it is a cluster of everything that I’ve done before.”

“Nothing else is gonna motivate me as much as love does – even when making ‘Revengeseekerz’”

Despite the album’s acrimonious title, it might surprise you to know one of the strongest emotions on ‘Revengeseekerz’ is in fact, love. “A thousand people scream my fucking name / It don’t mean shit if I don’t hear you say it,” they profess to an unnamed lover on ‘Dreamflasher’.

That propensity for romance is something Jane picked up from George Michael, and they pay homage to the legend on ‘Star People’ – which shares its name with a track on Michael’s 1996 LP ‘Older’, one of Jane’s favourite albums. “I think what really stuck to me is how George Michael writes from the perspective of love,” they say. “As I get older, I’ve come to terms with my own emotions and what motivates me. Nothing else is gonna motivate me as much as love does – even when making ‘Revengeseekerz’.”

The first half of ‘Star People’, they explain, frames the music world as one giant dick-swinging contest where objectification is rife. The second half thus poses the question: “If I give myself up, and I am more objectifiable, is that going to make me go farther?”

“If I go down the road of objectifying myself, I’m not going to ever fall in love again,” Jane continues. “It’s running in circles and asking yourself a question that nobody else can answer for you.”

Jane’s anxiety about the consequences of fame is palpable throughout the record, and it manifests in resentful, self-destructive tendencies. They repeatedly dream of “quitting my job / Just to get lucky all the time”, or get so catastrophically high that they beg: “Please God, save me / I’m so turnt right now”. It all begs the question: how much revenge is Jane inflicting on themselves?

“Quite a bit,” they nod, without missing a beat. “I tried distancing myself from where I came from for quite a bit, because I felt like I was only going to get boxed in, and I saw it happen to others time and time again.” While they’re still adamant that they “don’t want to be the face of anything”, they clarify that they never intended to make anyone feel left behind.

“I felt like I was running out of chances to prove to myself that I’m more than just one thing, and I got lost along the way,” they explain. “I did have a wake up call, and I was like, what better way to set the record straight than to embrace the sound I came up with? Because I know I’m going to excel in it. Compared to other albums that I’ve put out in the past, I still think this album fucking rocks.”

Jane not only leans back into their digicore roots; they sample their past work relentlessly on ‘Revengeseekerz’. Though Jane remains at odds with their older music, they acknowledge that “the ideas that I laid down there, there is something special.” Since the record’s release, Jane says they haven’t had a lot of time to react to its critical acclaim. They were too invested in their personal life when ‘Revengeseekerz’ dropped, they say, and they reckon that “life is only going to get more hectic for me”.

But when NME asks whether Jane feels they’ve settled their score on ‘Revengeseekerz’, they recall a rare moment of peace returning from their first headline tour in America. Jane managed to talk to themselves for the first time in months; thinking about the rooms they’ve filled, the things that have happened to them in private, it was then they could finally admit that “for the first time, maybe ever, I’m content with where I am”.

Jane Remover’s third album ‘Revengeseekerz’ is out now via DeadAir.

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