Music / Ethel Cain

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Hayden Silas Anhedönia (born March 24, 1998), known professionally as Ethel Cain, is an American Singer-Songwriter from Tallahassee, Florida.

Raised in Perry, Florida, she was raised in a Southern Baptist family and homeschooled for her entire life. She was introduced to music through her family's church, becoming involved in the church's choir and studying classical piano; she eventually left the church when she was 16.

She started writing and recording her own music in the mid-2010s, and officially started the Ethel Cain project in 2019. In 2022, after several successful EP releases, she released her debut album Preacher's Daughter, which received critical acclaim and garnered her a cult following.

Genre-wise, her music is considered a mix of Dream Pop, Singer-Songwriter, Ambient, Alternative Rock, and Slowcore. Thematically, her music deals with topics including intergenerational trauma, Domestic Abuse, drug addiction, poverty, death, and religious trauma. Her music is also notable for its use of "Ethel Cain" as a character separate from Hayden Anhedönia, especially on Preacher's Daughter, a Concept Album for which Ethel serves as the protagonist.

Discography

• Carpet Bed (EP) (2019)
• Golden Age (EP) (2019)
• Unreleased I (Compilation, 2020)
• Unreleased II (Compilation, 2020)
• Inbred (EP) (2021)
• Preacher's Daughter (2022)
• Perverts (EP) (2025)
• Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You (2025)

And I still call home, those tropes in Nebraska:

• Album Intro Track: "Family Tree (Intro)" for Preacher's Daughter.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: A theme in many of Ethel's songs is of being in love/obsessed with boys of nefarious character that includes differing levels of Domestic Abuse. Preacher's Daughter in particular has Logan, Isaiah, and (to a much lesser extent) Willoughby.
• Awesome McCoolname: Hayden Silas Anhedönia. And it's not even the Stage Name she goes by.
• Alter-Ego Acting: Ethel Cain is a character. You'll often see fans refer to the real-life Hayden by her real name to differentiate her from the persona.
• As the Good Book Says...: "Arsony" starts with a recitation of the first few lines of the Book of Genesis.
• Careful with That Axe: Most notably on "Ptolemaea."
  Stop... stop... stop... STOP!
• Celebrity Song: "Michelle Pfeiffer."
• Collector of the Strange: Hayden collects knives, guns, and art books.
• Concept Album: Preacher's Daughter, which tells the tragedy of Ethel Cain: a Preacher's Kid who was molested by her father, after having her heart broken by bad boys Willoughby and Logan, meets a boy named Isaiah and travels across the western United States with him. Romantic, right? Wrong. Isaiah drugged Ethel from the start of their travels and pimped her out as a prostitute. Once she comes to, Isaiah murders Ethel and cannibalizes her, and it all ends with a dying Ethel hoping that at least she'll go to heaven and someday see her mother again. It's not a happy story.
  • Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You follows this up by being an album dedicated to Ethel's and Willoughby's relationship before his disappearance.
• Country Mouse: Proudly considers herself a redneck, and is currently living in the big city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• Cover Version: Of "For Sure" by American Football.
• Downer Ending: Preacher's Daughter ends with Ethel being killed and cannibalized. Perverts is dreary throughout, and ends on a sad note with "Amber Waves."
• Drone of Dread: All across Perverts, especially the hurdy-gurdy on "Pulldrone."
• Drugs Are Bad: The demo "Princess Ketamine" is about dealing and doing ketamine; while the lyrics read as more neutral, the music does not.
• Echoing Acoustics: Her music uses a lot of reverb.
• Epic Rocking: Her default mode of songwriting. Taken up to eleven on Perverts.
• Everything Is an Instrument: "Punish" prominently features the creaking of an old swing.
• Face on a Milk Carton: Mentioned in "Strangers."
  When my mother sees me on the side of a milk carton
  In Winn-Dixie's dairy aisle, she'll cry and light up for me
• Fallen Angel: On "Pulldrone":
  I was an angel, though plummeting
• Hayseed Name: The names of the characters within the Preacher's Daughter lore, such Isaiah and Willoughby. "Ethel" is more of an Outdated Name, as it's a very uncommon name for young women nowadays (historically, the name Ethel was most popular in the 1890s) but the archaicness of it definitely evokes the deeply religious, conservative, Southern Gothic setting that the album is going for.
• I Have Many Names: Went under multiple aliases before deciding on Ethel Cain, such as Atlas, White Silas, Tommy, and Miss Anhedonia. She also has the SoundCloud only side project אשמדאי (Ashmedai, the Hebrew name for Asmodeus.)
• I'm a Humanitarian: Isaiah murders Ethel and cannibalizes her. It's also, horrifically, not ever stated that she isn't still alive while it's happening.
• Instrumental:
  • "Televangelism" has no singing, just an eerie piano.
  • "Etienne" and "Thatorchia" are instrumentals, though "Etienne" contains a brief vocal sample.
• Location Song: "A House in Nebraska," which is, of course, about Nebraska.
• Name of Cain: Evoked with her stage name.
• New Sound Album: Perverts is a departure from Preacher's Daughter as a full-on drone and dark ambient album.
• One-Man Song: "Willoughby's Theme."
• One-Woman Song: "Janie."
• One-Woman Wail: "August Underground" consists of Ethel vocalizing over an intense, haunting track. Fitting, given it's the track corresponding to Ethel being murdered by Isaiah.
• Parental Incest: "Hard Times" reveals that Ethel was a victim of this by her own father.
• The Penance: "Punish" is from the perspective of a pedophile who, after being shot by the victim's father, deliberately stabs themselves in the same spot as the gunshot wound each day while living in exile as punishment for what they've done. This is based on Gary Plauché (mentioned in song), a Louisiana father who shot and killed the man accused of kidnapping and abusing his son.
• Preacher's Kid: Ethel, Preacher's Daughter.
• Protest Song:
  • "American Teenager" is an anti-war song.
  • "From The River," a song she uploaded to SoundCloud in support of Palestinian liberation and dedicated to children murdered by the Israeli occupation.
• Road Trip Plot: "Thoroughfare," though it isn't as romantic as the song initially makes it seem.
• Southern Gothic: Preacher's Daughter especially focuses on the eerie side of Southern American culture.
• Shout-Out:
  • The thumbnail for the music video for "American Teenager" on YouTube stylizes the title of the song with the same font and formatting as the Emo band American Football. She's done a cover of their song "For Sure."
  • "Ptolemaea" is named in reference to The Divine Comedy, in which Ptolemaea is the circle of hell reserved for traitors.
  • "August Underground" is named after an exploitation horror film of the same name.
  • "Housofpsychoticwomn" is reference to the book by Kier-La Janisse.
  • The monologue on "Pulldrone" contains a quote from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
  • "Etienne" is named after French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée.
• Spoken Word in Music:
  • The outro of "Ptolemaea," spoken in a pitched down Creepy Monotone.
  • The first half of "Pulldrone."
• Stripperific: Wears a pair of stripper platform heels on the "Gibson Girl" single cover.
• Stylistic Suck: The piano in "Televangelism" starts falling out of tune towards the end, and the audio gets scratchy. Since the track represents Ethel's death, it's fitting and eerie.
• Title Track: "Perverts."
• Textless Album Cover: Preacher's Daughter and Perverts.
• Trans Tribulations: Subtextually. Part of why her music delves into themes of religious trauma and a love-hate relationship with Deep South culture is due to her experience being ostracized by her community when she came out as transgender.
• Unreliable Narrator: Invoked with "Thoroughfare." The song revolves around Ethel describing how she met, traveled the west with, and fell in love with Isaiah, while related source material reveals that Isaiah had forcefully kidnapped her from the start and kept her drugged during their travels. "Gibson Girl" follows this up with Ethel embracing the role of the seductress, when in reality, Isaiah is pimping her out and it's a coping mechanism for the scenario that she's trapped in.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Lil Aaron and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal appear on the Inbred EP.