Vault Chapter 01 — Jenny’s Tale
Shakespeare in the Streets
Curator’s note: Ren hasn’t said this piece is “about Shakespeare.” That connection is mine — a listener’s read of how the song works.
Jenny’s Tale opens Ren’s modern tragedy cycle — a raw, street-level story told like a stage monologue. The first lines drop us into stillness, then the city moves and fate moves with it. It feels simple on the surface — voice, guitar, a scene at night — but the rhythm carries that old theatre energy where a character talks straight to us and we can’t look away.
Lyrical Analysis
The quiet opening — “It was a quiet, dark night on an empty street / Somewhere in London City” — sets the camera. Nothing fancy, no moral lesson yet. Ren paints absence before action, like the stage is cleared and a spotlight’s waiting. Jenny is ordinary, knows the town, knows the floor. That comfort is exactly what fate uses. In these songs, safety isn’t safety — it’s the moment before the turn.
Then the story cuts — same night, different place — and we meet James. Those mirrored scenes feel very Shakespearean: two lives moving toward each other while we, the audience, can see what they can’t. Ren uses words like “devil” and “soul,” not to preach, but to give James a kind of haunted weight — a kid shaped by neglect more than malice. Evil here is human, messy, and close to home.
When Jenny senses danger — “it was like there was something in the air” — the language gets tight and breathless. The rhyme tumbles forward; our stomach does the same. The demand — “Give me all your money, bitch” — lands like a slap. Ren doesn’t lean on gore; he uses precise images that make time slow down: “sapphire eyes, a dagger-shaped stalagmite.” It’s beautiful and brutal in the same breath, which is exactly why it sticks.
The refrain returns, but it’s changed: the calm street now feels like aftermath. Jenny “lays still on the cold concrete.” Earlier, “she knew this floor.” Now we know it too, but as a gravestone rather than a shortcut home. That twist carries the whole moral weight of the song without a single lecture.
What I love most is how Ren refuses to judge. Jenny isn’t a headline; she’s a person. James isn’t a monster; he’s lost. The song holds both truths at once — the damage done, and the forces that shape the one who did it. That balance is why this story lingers. It doesn’t tell us what to think; it makes us feel the cost.
Across this Jenny’s Tale read, the piece works like a pocket tragedy: set the stage, split the view, cross the paths, and show the price. It’s Shakespeare by way of South London — not because it quotes the Bard, but because it carries the same engine: ordinary people, terrible turns, and a chorus in our heads asking how it could have gone another way.
🕯️ Renflections
Every story deserves a response. How did Jenny’s Tale strike you — tragedy, justice, or mercy?
Did it remind you of Shakespeare’s street-stage humanity, where fate and forgiveness share the same light?
Jenny’s tale is a contradiction, how much of this tale is actually about Jenny? What do we actually learn about her, other than she was walking by herself on streets she had walked many times before, was frightened, then killed…? What do we really know about Jenny from what we are told, was she really the focus, or was it the situation she was in regardless of who she was as a person?
What does this tell us about the social narratives around women walking by themselves at night, the continued weight on women as victims to stop the violence perpetrated against them?
What narratives do we assume in relation to the little we are told about her? Why are we told so little about her? What is she besides a helpless victim?
True crime stories hold fascination for so many of us, to the extent that they are glamourised and killers become celebrities as a result. Despite the glaringly obvious statistics on violent crime and domestic violence, we still seem to focus more on trying to explain the reasons for male violence in their personal, often traumatic history, while condemning the victims, or ignoring them altogether as we revel in the gory details of their fate…..
Time how much time is actually spent on Jenny, even in this, HER tale. In the time spent on her, what do you actually learn about her that isn’t then used / leads us to make a judgement?
This isn’t meant as an attack, but hopefully next time you hear similar stories, you can reflect on where the narrative leads and see the same patterns, then ask why?
Beautifully put, Aly. 💛 You’ve nailed something that’s easy to overlook — Jenny’s tale isn’t really hers at all, and maybe that’s Ren’s point. She becomes a symbol of all the women whose stories get eclipsed by the fascination with “why he did it.”
Even the title almost tricks us: Jenny’s Tale promises her voice, but what we get is a record of her silencing — told through the rhythm of the street, through Screech’s violence, through the city itself.
It’s a commentary not only on gendered violence, but on the way society frames it — we turn trauma into entertainment, and empathy into a footnote.
I LOVE that description, Jenny’s tale is not her words, or evern her story, its just the story of how she was judged and silenced….. perfect way of putting it.