Ethel Cain Is Done Trying to Control the Narrative

[Lori Dee ✅]

Ethel Cain Is Done Trying to Control the Narrative
The singer-songwriter talks Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, her complicated relationship with home, and finding freedom in letting go of the story.
https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/ethel-cain-willoughby-tucker-interview-2025 🔗
W Magazine - by Kyle Munzenrieder
Oct. 13, 2025

In August, you released your second album, Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, a Southern Gothic epic that runs from folk to shoegaze. Your personal story—growing up as Hayden Silas Anhedönia in Florida's evangelical Panhandle, transitioning in your early 20s—isn't what you explore in your music. Instead, you're telling the fictional story of a character named Ethel Cain, a preacher's daughter in 1980s Alabama. How do you want people to know who you are?

There are so many facets to my story. I'm like, However people come to know it is how they come to know it. The more I try to control the narrative, the more I find myself chopping pieces off to make it fit.

Was trying to tell this character's story your entryway into music?

There are chunks of my life defined by stories that I was trying to tell. I felt like I was going to explode if I didn't tell these stories, and I never finished any of them. When the Ethel Cain story popped up, I said, "I'm going to finish this one." It will be the thing that I continue chewing on until either I finish it or I die, whichever one comes first.

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The interview was too long to post here. Click the link above to read the full interview.