Ethel Cain, I'll Always Love You
The music of Hayden Anhedönia, my muse, and Preacher's Daughter.
Ethel Cain has been my muse since the first dawn I tore her lyrics apart, already aching to reach for my guitar, and desperate to memorize their haunting melodies until my fingertips bled. A core memory set in a hot summer morning, remembered by the weight of being aimless at that particular point in life, which I could no longer avoid. That was hardly the worst of what I felt. By the time I finished listening to her discography, I was paralyzed, crying for what seemed like hours after discovering Ptolemea and Inbred. Clicking on the Spotify playlist “Ethel Cain songs from least to most disturbing” now feels comical in retrospect, but the intensity of emotions her songs evoke in me remains the same. If anything, it’s only been harnessed, channeled, and intensified.
I’m convinced there can’t be anyone incapable of resonating with something in Ethel Cain’s music unless they misunderstand her completely.
When someone creates poetry with their music, it’s special. But when someone expresses your identity, your heartfelt experiences, your feelings— everything that makes you you, so profoundly with both poetry and music, it’s extraordinary.
I feel this way about Hozier, Aurora, Florence and the Machine… but enough about my music taste.
What is it about Ethel Cain that makes her music so special— so universal?
I use that term loosely to emphasize her relatability, but she does carry a timeless quality. That aching kind of understanding of our lived experience. The core of being human.
Hayden Anhedönia is a 27-year-old singer-songwriter who began producing music on her own, and she is the voice behind Ethel Cain, the ‘90s era persona at the center of her albums. She blends Southern Gothic with chilling ambiance and post-rock to create cinematic storytelling and haunting narratives. As Hayden has said herself, Ethel Cain was born out of the darkest, most deep-seated fears she has dared to explore, especially in Preacher’s Daughter. That's part of what makes her so compelling.
How many of us can even name our innermost fears, let alone write songs about them? To face our deepest fears, whether they are shaped by lived experience or common observations of cruelty, is to strip ourselves bare and come to terms with the fragility of being human. Ironically, it’s also what sets us free. For artists, it can guide us to a type of creativity that is rare, not only to make something, but to create art that is moving, authentic, and true.
From religious trauma to cannibalism to misuse of drugs, Ethel Cain hits hard. Whether I personally relate to ruthless Catholic experiences, the American dream through the eyes of a Southern teenager, or the darkest corners of cross-country travel doesn’t really matter. The individuality of a certain narrative in storytelling isn’t what makes her music whole.
It’s the remembering. The echoes of your own religious trauma, the collective consequence of the misuse of faith, the loneliness of leaving everything familiar, the addictions you didn’t know you had, the heartbreak of letting go of your first love, the grisly reality of betrayal at the hands of someone you trusted. That’s what makes Preacher’s Daughter whole.
Art that forces me to face truths like that spontaneously, almost accidentally, has always inspired me. Listening to her songs or reading her lyrics is striking in this familiar way. What fascinates me is that every time, it feels new. Every time I listen, I unpack layers I hadn’t seen before. That’s the iceberg of music and poetry— its multifaceted nature, unraveling aspects of me I haven’t faced yet.
“Dancing with the windows open
I can't let go when something's broken
It's all I know and it's all I want now”
“Suffering is nigh, drawing to me
Calling me the one, I'm the white light
Beautiful, finite
Even the iron still fears the rot”
The precious thing about living is discovering art that moves you. Rhyme and meter might be the first thing they teach you, but luckily, the truth is that everyone can appreciate poetry. All it takes for a piece of writing to matter is for it to click with someone. Just one person. A stranger, maybe. Someone with an alive soul who wants to read it, or listen to it again and again.
That’s how art is recognized. It doesn’t take neat formatting, publication, marketing, fame or trends for it to be valuable. When music does go trendy, it also does not automatically render that song invaluable.
That’s also how stars are born, when those souls start to gather in collective appreciation. Ethel Cain’s next album, Willoughy Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, will undoubtedly shed light on that community. After all, art is a platform for many differing voices to communicate while proving its relatability by the common ground of connection— those difficult emotions arising within all of us at the edge of inspiration.
Her EPs, namely Perverts, Inbred, Golden Age, remain special in their own ways, filled with the cinematic storytelling, crushing poems, and some experimental sounds. They also include various themes to cry about, from deeply rooted trauma to ghostly love songs.
There is a running joke on social media among longtime fans with the niche interest in her unreleased songs, who exclude anyone that doesn’t know about them. It might seem extreme, but she’s just that good.
“I don't know what happened
I was young and sweet, and then something happened
Something overwhelming
Something everlasting”
I am still the same child who fell asleep with wired headphones on, letting music lull me into a dreamless sleep. That has always been my way of coping with emotion. It’s comforting to know that music like this still exists in a world that’s becoming more alienated and robotic by the day. I know it would comfort many others feeling the same anxiety, if only they’d let it into their understanding, and find the courage to be moved. Maybe write some poetry or compose some melodies about it.
It has driven me to write many poems, often in a hurried frenzy induced by loud volume at night. If it’s not Ethel Cain, you deserve to have that parasocial relationship with a singer you love too.
If you feel it, it has meaning. The something great always hits.