Ethel Cain: The dark side of Taylor Swift

The album of the summer includes songs that are eight, 10, or 15-minutes-long, and, on them, we hear such unsettling reflections as these: “Don’t ask me why I hate myself. / As I’m circling the drain.” These lyrics are from the album of the moment, at least according to critics in some specialized media outlets. They’ve rated it five out of five stars. New Musical Express (NME) points out that it’s “a bleak, yet beautiful record.” And Far Out Magazine calls the artist “a visionary talent.”

Others are less euphoric, such as Pitchfork, which gives the work a 6.7 out of 10: “Actually hearing it out, though, can feel like an endurance exercise, or a test of faith.”

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You was released on August 8. It’s written by 27-year-old Ethel Cain, a trans singer who was born in Tallahassee, Florida. She has a cult following: her listeners find her gloomy music and torn, dark personality stimulating, an alternative to the colorful Eras of Taylor Swift.

But who is Ethel Cain? She, as well as the characters she describes in her songs, could be featured in an episode of the series Euphoria. The singer appears to be a young woman exploring gender identity. And her work has a penchant for toxic relationships; it’s littered with anxiety attacks, as well as episodes of violence and addiction.

Cain has been through some of these situations firsthand. She would also fit into films like Carrie (1976), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), or books by Stephen King or David Foster Wallace. Ethel Cain certainly isn’t a pop star in the mold of Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, or Benson Boone: she doesn’t want to be a stadium pop celebrity. However, her music exposes concerns and problems that many young people find comfort in.

In her songs, the American artist uncovers the open, seething wounds that never stop festering in her country, especially under the current president: religious fanaticism, the ancestral terrors of the South, an unhealthy relationship with sex, racism, and – in general – everything that can happen in a strip club in a remote town in the heartland.

Cain’s real name is Hayden Silas Anhedönia. She was born in Tallahassee, Florida but grew up in Perry, a small town of 7,000 inhabitants in the same state. She describes her childhood as “oppressive.” Her parents are Baptists – her father is a pastor – and she and her three siblings were raised in a deeply religious household. The Southern Baptist Church is the most influential Protestant congregation in the United States. Traditionally, its members vote for the Republican Party. And, although there’s been progress – especially with the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017 – women play a secondary role to men within the faith.

When she turned 12, Cain told her mother she was gay. She was immediately sent to religious therapy. Meanwhile, Cain developed artistically: she sang in her father’s church choir and attended theater classes. At 18, she returned to her birthplace to study at Florida State University. Once there, she chose to break free from her strict upbringing in Perry and lost herself in goth clubs, gorging herself on drugs. At 20, she came out as trans on Facebook. And that’s when Hayden Silas Anhedönia launched her musical alter ego: Ethel Cain.

After putting out a few interesting songs, her talent was unleashed in 2022: Preacher’s Daughter, her debut album, thrilled select critics and began to garner a following. The 76 minutes of murky, ecstatic music is beautiful in its gloom. Cain resembles a kind of gothic Lana Del Rey, with laments strangled by a blanket of electric guitars. It’s an album that Nick Cave would love.

The album tells the story of a Southern girl and her often-turbulent relationship with her boyfriends: violence, abuse, drugs, God, murder, psychological manipulation and even cannibalism emerge. It’s a gruesome script fit for a series. We also find pop (albeit in its own way). The accessible song American Teenager became an unexpected hit and made Rolling Stone‘s list of The 50 Most Inspirational LGBTQ Songs of All Time.

American Teenager could pass as a Taylor Swift song (if the artist had a crucifix and the word “please” tattooed on her throat). With Preacher’s Daughter on the platforms, Cain opened for powerful female-led bands, like Florence and the Machine, or Boygenius.

What happened next was that Cain smelled the insidious aromas of fame. And, subsequently, in January of 2025, she self-sabotaged and released an impossible work: Perverts. This 90-minute album is composed of ghostly sounds, dark minimalism, detuned keyboards, unnerving circular sounds and slow, warped chords à la John Cage. It’s an auditory experience that requires a high tolerance.

Around that time, Cain was living in an abandoned church in a nearly deserted town in Indiana. Although she was advised that a move to Los Angeles or New York would be better for launching her career, she preferred rural Alabama, where she currently resides. Last July – a month before the release of her much-lauded new album – Cain’s artistic project suffered a serious setback, as the singer had to manage her own Karla Sofía Gascón case. A pair of anonymous accounts on the social media platform X recovered old posts from Cain in which she supported the construction of a wall to curb Latino immigration (Trump’s dream), wore a T-shirt with the phrase “legalize incest” and used racist language. Cain immediately acknowledged the veracity of the texts and images in a statement, saying she posted them when she was 19 years old. She also apologized, claiming that she lived through a time when she fell “into a subculture online that prioritized garnering attention at all costs.”

“I intended to be as inflammatory and controversial as possible. I would have said (and usually did say) anything, about anyone, to gain attention and ultimately just make my friends laugh,” she added.

Cain also felt that the emergence of her old comments “is a common tactic used against minorities, specifically trans people in this case, with no goal besides the destruction of an individual.”

In a recent podcast for The New York Times, she stated: “With my identity in this political time in America, you know, people are not going to like you. Queer people are to this day attacked with all kinds of slanderous material. And I wanted to point that out.”

The artist managed to silence the controversy with her statement. And, a few weeks later, she released Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You… a 10-song, 73-minute work (long, but not as long as the others) that narratively functions as a prequel to her first album, Preacher’s Daughter.

Willoughby Tucker offers a narcotic Red House Painters-esque rhythm – a piercing emotion and a pleading voice that sometimes recalls Tori Amos and, in other moments, Dolores O’Riordan (without the trills). Despite sometimes being uncomfortable, the album exudes beauty, with its subtle country arrangements, a song that could even be radio-friendly (Fuck Me Eyes) and a stunning finale: Waco, Texas. It’s a song about doomed lovers that starts off sleepily and builds in intensity until the 15-minute mark, where she sings soulful declarations like: “But I still believe in Nebraska dreaming / ‘Cause I’d rather die / Than be anything but your girl.”

The album is receiving extra publicity after Lana Del Rey released a song – All About Ethel – a couple of weeks ago, in which she takes digs at Cain. The rivalry between the two artists has been going on for a long time and only recently reignited. Cain responded to Del Rey’s song with this message: “Lana Del Rey blocked me on Instagram.” Meanwhile, Nicki Minaj seems delighted with the dispute and weighs in on her social media. All very entertaining.

Proof that Ethel Cain is starting to make a name for herself internationally is that tickets for her concerts in Barcelona (November 7) and Madrid (November 8) have already sold out. There’s nothing better to usher in autumn than the haunting ballads of this sad girl.

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