dude im so messed up from that time in my life :'( i feel like this album transported me back to when id see so much glorification of s.h and e.ds and the whole aesthetic of being a abuse little girl uuGHHHHH and that scream almost made me THROW UP
I experienced this album on a long train journey for the first time and sat with the lyrics the whole time and it was the most incredible album experience honestly
especially with songs like House in Nebraska, that line "it hurts to miss you, but its worse to know, that im the reason you wont come home" hits so hard
I think "X" and "Pearl" are! Maxxine from X is literally a preachers daughter tho we dont get much backstory on her life being raised by a preacher other than a few mentions. In Pearl, she's a farmers daughter, but it still applies in a way
Hayden does something so special with this album - at first you're just so swept up in the production and how eerie and haunting and atmospheric it is. And then the more you listen, the more you get into the lyrics and you suddenly realise she was telling a fictional story the whole time, with whole ass characters and subplots, and your brain just explodes. The fact the story of Ethel Cain was a film concept at first, and she's apparently writing a book for it too... she's a STORYTELLER🤌
@@kartkaesquei heard she’s making three movies and three books for each album, 1 book/movie for preachers daughter and 1 book/movie for her upcoming albums! not sure how true it is tho 😭
The first time I really heard the sceam in ptolomea I was driving at night and immediately broke down sobbing. there's something so visceral about the scream that feels like every woman can deeply relate to the desperation and stark terror behind it. It feels like it holds all the fear of every warning and "safety tip" you grow up hearing but then you're in the situation and none of them work...
i listen to that song when cptsd is weighing me down and it just feels so ... validating? call me crazy but i feel better after listening to it. such an emotional release
that "first time i could see a man who wasnt angry" like DESTROYED me. literally had to lay my head down on my desk and cry for a minute. this album is roooooough
It really hits hard bc my SA-er who was my friends father (not friends anymore due to them taking his side bc of money 🤩) would wake me up early in the morning while my friend was still asleep and his wife had left
@@hayley_g in ethel’s case, i interpret it as her realizing that what happened to her wasn’t her fault and forgiving the choices her naive self made so she is able to move on.
Yes 😭 or like does she forgive what has been done to her / god not being able to save her whilst accepting her own death… that line just gives me chills 👏🏻 My body froze the first time I listened to the song! No one is doing it like her
@@lizzie4914 hayden actually spoke about it, and she said this line (and sun bleached flies as a whole song) is the one she feels is where her and ethel overlap. and the lyric is about recognizing the cycle of abuse she went through, forgiving it all, and letting it go so she doesn’t perpetuate it and the cycle ends
As a queer person raised in the south with SO much religious trauma, this album is so beautiful cathartic. The ending is so bittersweet and despite how disturbing Ethel’s end is, the way she responds to it from the afterlife is almost hopeful. Yes, she’s dead. But she’s looking down on Isaiah and practically spitting at him during ‘Strangers.’ And for everyone else in her life (specifically her mother) she apologizes, says she’s doing okay, says she loves her and is ready to see her when she arrives?! Also anybody who loves this album should watch the show Yellowjackets, I could write an essay about how the songs correlate to the younger characters.
Shoutout to the live commentators for helping him understand the album. The context of the Ethel Cain lore is really important for making it as profound as it is.
this album is the best example of what “church music” does. it’s actually a psychological trick that’s used to stimulate certain parts of the brain to tigger and emotional response. specific chord progressions and scales, typically found in church and religious music are actually meant to make you cry. knowing this makes this album even more genius.
Wow that's actually really interesting, I feel kind of stupid for never realising that was a deliberate thing. To be honest I just thought I was overly emotional as there are so many hymns that immediately make me choke up when I hear them, haha.
Even when I was done believing, I loved playing worship music on guitar cause it’s designed to get you into it and just jam, I’ve been wanting more secular music to do the same thing
Sun Bleached Flies is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in my life. This whole album deserves much more recognition but Sun Bleached Flies in particular deserves to be etched in history
just the imagery of the sun bleached flies alone is incredible, they passed waiting at the window to get out and even after death they stay there waiting, long enough to be bleached by the sun
I think whether Ethel has openly discussed it or not, Ptolemaea addresses a very real fear that trans women have about being MURDERED if they flirt with the wrong guy who assumes they're cis. Not a coincidence that Gibson Girl right before it is very seductive and sexual.
i think as a standalone song ptolemaea is very open to interpretation (as is the whole album, hayden even said herself that ethel is neither trans nor cis bc shes meant to be a vessel for the listener though in the movie she will def cast a trans actress) and i know that at its core its about a woman being rped & murdered but as a victim of domestic violence the stop was sooo real to me it could have brought me to my KNEES
I had no idea hayden was trans until recently - re-listening to an album about a woman going missing and later sold into sex work, then killed by her lover is even more harrowing and heart breaking with that knowledge. holy fuck.
I read somewhere that Hayden has said that around the time she came out, she made some very risky decisions surrounding drugs and sex and that Ethel is an alternate “fork in the road” where Hayden never got help to get out of those situations. I think with this in mind, your interpretation definitely makes sense!! obviously the demons and sacrifices are scary, but at its core it is a very real situation that Hayden unfortunately probably wondered if she would have ended up in :(
not so fun fact: I was asleep the other night and I had my earbuds in. the pillow pressed a button on my earbuds and Ptolemea started playing so I woke up hearing his demented voice in the pitch dark. I have never been so scared by a song before
The filmmaker side really shows in Hayden. She had such a clear vision for the album and just went and did it. I’m really excited actually because she said that she plans on writing about Ethel’s mother for the next album, “Peacher’s Wife,” after coming to a better understanding of her own mom, (something that’s alluded to in Strangers)
I’m still so glad she came reconnect with her mum better, bc she’s so active on reactions to Hayden’s work and is always so supportive and sweet in the comments. Mother’s mother is a pure and lovely person ❤
She also has a third album planned after that's going to be about Ethel's paternal grandmother and a book about Ethel and Willoughby's relationship planned
@@hkazu63 Totally! There was another youtuber who reacted to PD, and posted a vlog at the concert where Ethel was smiling and singing to her mother who was in the front row, and it was so sweet 😭❤️💕
@@renquis I heard another the grandmother, but I didn’t know about the book. That’s really exciting! I really want to know why Willoughby left, if it’s supposedly Ethel’s fault
@@mr.perezident9381 Iirc it was an interview a year or two ago where she talked about how she had the next 10 years planned out where she has a variety of content to tell the story. I think she might've also mentioned wanting to make a movie but I'm not 100%
The bit that still makes me cry after how many times I've listened to this album is the last line, of her saying that she'll meet mer mother when she gets to heaven, it's the generational trauma it's the forgiveness of a woman in a different but also awful situation it's unconditional love despite it all, it's just really needing your mum.
yall aren't talking enough about Strangers. I think that's the best song i've ever heard in my life. the ending when she's yelling "am I making you feel sick" !!!!! DUDE
@@cherrycokee to have turn in your stomach = something that makes you sick, ie. she wonders if she makes him sick emotionally, but also he cannibalised her so she is also LITERALLY turning in his stomach!
i just have to say, the emotion that you show listening to this album and the way you read into this album even though you said it wasn’t your thing is just amazing. i feel like a lot of music commentary can be dismissive, especially of female songwriters/vocalists. you caring about the artist and hoping she hasn’t experienced the things she is singing about means a lot to me and shows the kind of person you are, which is thoughtful. i’m glad i watched this video
I've said it before but I'll say it again, this album truly captures what it's like to be a woman in a religious setting you're taught to be pure and holy and always turn the other cheek. you're taught you're there solely for a man's comfort and this album really puts it into perspective
Or as a queer person in general really. I’m a gay man and This album changed my life, it helped me realize it’s ok to not be ok and that the trauma I’ve suffered is valid, yet at the same time it will never fully heal, but that’s ok. If it’s meant to be it will be. God Hayden’s an icon of the community and should be engraved in queer and feminist history.
My friends recommend this album to me a few weeks ago and I made the mistake of listening to it at night by myself in our living room. After Ptolemmaea I was paranoid for the rest of the night. I was unwell.
Dude this is the first time I'm listening to the album and even if there's a commentary, I WAS STILL SCARED I HAD TO CLOSE THE DOOR OF MY HOUSE AND PRESSED 3 ON EVERY ELECTRIC FAN COZ I WAS FEELING UNEASY but what an album. Literal work of art.
I can only imagine her scoring for a film. She's amazing telling those stories not just lyrically but the production itself felt like they're telling stories.
Okay just in case youre not a aware, this is a concept album. Ethel Cain is a persona and the main character on this story. Ethel/Hayden herself has had some dark times that may have influenced the story of Preacher's Daughter but its not her actual story
I’m 64 and a father….. my reaction was exactly the same . I tend to like melancholy music but I too was moved to tears at several points in listening. The idea of that kind of tormented youth is so hard to bear…. Even for us “southern boys”. Really enjoyed watching you react and thinking how similar my emotions ran during listening. I think Gibson Girl is reference to the 1890s first supermodel…. A too young model for a soap company. Interesting history. It predated The girl in the red velvet swing…. Evelyn Nesbit. Another dark historical sex scandal. History is repeating itself with a different cast each iteration. Peace to all.
but still ended up being overpowered by men (the devouring of her body in strangers; the sexual abuse from her father in hard times) which is something prevalent in the Christian world YOOOOO WHAT A MIND
thoroughfare is so fucking haunting because it sounds so lovely and has some vintage love story song vibes…and then you realize the actual meaning behind it. the way the song differs from the ethel cain missing poster (which says that she was actually kidnapped) is incredible.
Dude I get the BEST most cathartic, visceral sobs out of my body when listening to the scream in Ptolemea. Ethel Cain is a fucking musical storytelling GENIUS, one of the best I've ever heard. Btw, this is the first video of yours I've ever seen and I'm immediately subscribing cuz this was one of my favorite Preacher's Daughter reactions I've ever seen.
the first time i listened to this album i was on a road trip and two of the four people in the car were dead asleep. it was the middle of the night and i sobbed to it. god bless mother cain
I genuinely do not know a more artistic, cohesive, and moving album. The way each song seamlessly ties into one another, each with a very clear tie to the overarching theme. I do not think I will ever love another album more than this one.
I saw someone write this and thought it really makes sense: Intro Joseph Cain, Ethel's father, died ten years before all this in a fire incident. On the literal side, I think "Jesus can always reject his father, but he cannot escape his mother's blood" might mean that since Mary gave birth a virgin, her blood's really the only one flowing in Jesus biologically, none from Joseph, his non-biological father. American Teenager (copy, paste) "Growing up I was surrounded by visions of NASCAR, rock'n'roll, and being the one who would change everything." Cain said in a statement. "They make you think it's all achievable and that if nothing else, you should at least die trying. What they don't tell you is that you need your neighbor more than your country needs you. I wrote this song as an expression of my frustration with all the things the 'American Teenager' is supposed to be but never had any real chance of becoming." We also learn about her drinking habits on this song. A House in Nebraska A torch song. It's about Ethel's ex-love, Willoughby Tucker who left Shady Grove. She's reminscing of him and that old house they used to hang out in together. It is actually not located on NE, they were just imagining it being there. Western Nights Here, Ethel met Logan, a man who is not the most uhh tame... Sometimes even violent to Ethel. Logan then later died on a police shootout; Ethel was able to run away. On the next two songs, Ethel contemplates about her past traumas while on the run. Family Tree So, on the genius page of this song, it mentions disturbing family secrets. I actively believe (and some other redditors too!) that that disturbing secret might be her killing her father "I've killed before and I'II kill again" "Take me down to the river” Hard Times Ethel then looked back when her dad used to SA her when she was younger and how it still haunts her up to that day. "I'm tired of you still tied to me" Thoroughfare Hayden herself confirmed that Ethel is an unreliable narrator. In this song, it talks about Ethel insisting on jumping on Isaiah's (a man she met on a thoroughfare, on Texas somewhere on the side of the road... Jh) truck but on one of the official visuals of the album, it mentions that she was last seen being kidnapped by a man with a truck. I believe she's experiencing stockholm syndrome. Other than that, without these context and outside the album, this song does a good storytelling, it's all in there! Gibson Girl The two both reached California. Isaiah brought her to a club, fed her drugs and began pimping her. Ptolomaea "The song name is inspired from Alighieri's Divine Comedy [specifically Dante's Inferno] Ptolemea, named after Ptolemy, is a circle of Hell in which the betrayers/traitorous reside." She's hallucinating here. The final stop seems like Isaiah has began physically hurting her. (Ethel's father died in a fire incident and the lyric 'I'm on fire, I'm on fire, I'm on fire.. ." comes to mind. Maybe that's her punishment for "betraying" her father.) August Underground - Televangelism The former is Ethel on her final moments. The loud bang at the end is not a gunshot but Isaiah slamming shut a door as Ethel dies. "As she closes her eyes, she opened it in a quick manner and sees light" That's how I felt when August... transitions to Televangelism's first note outta nowhere. Televangelism is Ethel ascending to Heaven. The broken notes toward the end signifies how broken she was throughout her life. Sun Bleached Flies As Ethel ascends, she looks back to her life one more time - all the best and worst things she went through. "So I met him there and told him I believe" probs means that she's finally in Heaven and finally forgave all the things as they come back to her. Strangers Ethel is watching down as to what Mr. Bastard is doing. Oh? he's eating her! Throughout the bridge, Ethel screams "Am I making you feel sick?" multiple times but is followed by a single "No", Wtf Isiah? She then said her last goodbye to her mother which concludes the album.
Wow, thanks for posting. Great summary and really adds to the listening experience. I’d only listened to house in Nebraska, American teenager and sun bleached flies and had no idea how dark it all was as a full album. Ptolemea is terrifying, very difficult listen.
i adore how the last few lyrics are a goodbye to her mother, because the next album in the trilogy is going to be about her mother. it’s the perfect foreshadowing.
Okay okay ever since I discovered Ethel/Hayden, I too had to read the lyrics because like you said this album makes you wanna feel the lyrics and really listen. I also found articles of the lore of Ethel Cain that was confirmed by Hayden herself. So here are the characters: -Preacher Joseph (her father) -Willoughby Tucker(her first love and who left town) -Logan Phelps (the second lover, criminal and shot dead) And last, but not least and the the absolute worse... -Isaiah. (The last "lover" who drugged Ethel, forced her into sex work, murdered and ate her) The album absolutely destroyed me but Ptolemaea which is the first song I came across. Which is the song where Ethel gets murdered by Isaiah. Also I recommend listening to the acapella because you can hear Isaiah talk and scare Ethel before murdering her and if you can hear closely, you can hear her choke on her blood. Hopefully this helps with the timeline and the characters involved in this lore but if you guys want me to share one the articles, I can totally can but big fat trigger warning there is some heavy trauma, grooming, SA, sex trafficking, murder and cannibalism
a bit bittersweet that she is not our little secret anymore especially how much her music is intimate and personal to me, HOWEVER IM SO PROUD AND HAPPY SHE IS GETTING THE RECOGNITION SHE DESERVES. LOVE MOTHER SO MUCH AND ENORMOUSLY THANKFUL FOR SAVING ME THROUGH HER MUSIC 💖
@@allie-gu8ye nobody said anything about hating men genius. I'm a lesbian and we're usually just kind of indifferent, hence her saying she wasn't expecting to love him. Theres spaces between love and hate lmao
I’ve felt this album is a great example of all the kinds of grief women experience and are perpetually experiencing through their lives as well as queer people, since so much of her work is rooted in growing up trans in the South. Sad yes, but in a way that’s very grounded and real. It’s just reality for many, many people. This album is either things we’ve experienced or what we fear experiencing, pretty much no in between.
him saying it feels like her reminiscing over her own dead body during hard times, hes really good at picking up these things because that is the album, its her thinking of her life before her death and accepting what happened and letting go. the repetition of “if its meant to be then it will be” in sun-bleached flies is so beautiful to me, because its such a simple phrase but it clearly holds so much meaning about her just accepting that its not her fault and she is letting all of the pain go. that, contrasting with strangers, is something so painful, because lines like “don’t talk to strangers or you might fall in love”, she talked to isaiah and went on the trip with him, a stranger, and fell in love, which brought her inevitable death and the cannibalism of her body. she never had a resting place, a “freezer bride”, and she then gets eaten. the interpretation of the cannibalism as a metaphor for submission is truly disturbing, she has been violated by men her whole life, starting with her father, and her dead body being violated in the most inhuman and violent way it could’ve been is so like heartbreaking, but i also love the interpretation of cannibalism as a true act of love. even after being eaten, she’s asking if she was good enough. she would let him literally consume her whole because she still loves him and clings to that vision of him from the past through motel rooms and long car rides. the final part of the album being a letter to her mother, who, in life, will never know what happened to her daughter, and finds out she’s missing from a picture on a milk carton, who she clearly loves even through the negative emotions she holds from her childhood and the church, its beautiful. also in ptolemaea, that eerie voice is said to be some sort of drug induced hallucinations, the deep, distorted buzzing of the flies showing how deep she is in the drugs and the discomfort grown. i believe that the voice is supposed to represent death itself or god himself. “i was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood, i am here now as you run from me still” this being death or god, watching her as a child and with her still. the next song being being her literally running from her death is so fitting with the idea this is death, but also running from the afterlife and god and facing what happened in her life, and him watching over her is very “god”-esque, especially with the “each coming to know their god by an act of senseless violence” omg. “promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you” implies isaiah was always planning on this, always going to kill her, only could feel hatred to her and didn’t truly love her back, thinking back to the “and if you hate me, please don’t tell me, just let the lights bleed all over me” is heartbreaking because she knew he hated her and she still loves him so much. also in thoroughfare, the symbolism of him being described as the antithesis of all the other men she’s loved, a man who wasn’t angry, and then him being the one to end her life? thats the most sickeningly ironic and tragic things i have ever heard.
I imagine the the mother's blood line is the idea is that you can always denile who your father is but you cant lie about your mother because you came out of her.
Ethel is an underrated artist and all her songs are so beautifully sung, crafted and is so poignant along with poetic. I love her song “ Sun bleached flies ”. I've been listening to her since 2020 and i would recommend everyone!!
The way this album has taken over gay twitter for the last few months is wild. Great reaction. The fact that you said "My ADH brain is too fast," leaving off the second "D" in "ADHD" because your brain was moving too fast, is very relatable.
Sun bleached flies is such a masterpiece, the way the ending sounds like a worship song in church, creating this sense of how in death, she’s come back to god, this sense of relief that even through all the pain and abandonment she’s taken back into heaven. “I forgive it all as it comes back to me” showing how her faith and death has allowed her to find peace finally…like damn BUT ALSO how she still acknowledges the difference between the fundamentals of god and how her southern Baptist upbringing uses the faith to be toxic and excuse toxic behaviour…gonna cry rn she’s so girl boss
"i have a feeling that her father is not going to be a good character" OH BOY! STRAP IN, BOY, THIS ABOUT TO GET UGLY edit: oh troy...this is a rough one truly
@@urlocalfolklorian hellooo, basically Ethel Cain (the character that Hayden based the album around) is the “preachers daughter” and her father, Dale Earnhardt, sa’d her which is what a few songs on the album are about. mainly family tree and hard times. ethel cain doesn’t have a very good time throughout the story of this album :(
i could literally write an essay on just Ptolomaea alone! I've like the interpretation of ptolomaea to be that she is hallucinating that she is talking to god! that through her religious trauma, she imagines a god that cursed women because of their "original sin" of betraying man. "Bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception" How women are only objects, promised to men and that it is what they deserve. "Blessed be you, girl, promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you" is god telling her that she is doing what is right by letting mam do what they want with her. It is horrifying, terrible, sad, and Hayden does an amazing job of using the characterization of Ethel to portray the way that men in the church think about women.
You didn't even talk about the the lines "Freezer bride, your sweet divine, you devour like smoked bovine hide. How funny, I never considered myself tough." SHE'S LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT HER FLESH! She never considered herself a tough person emotionally or mentally. With that being said, she never thought that her body would be tough either until her spirit is watching Isaiah devour her..............lyrical genius, master of metaphors, MUTHA of the daughters of Cain!!!!!!
This whole album literally gives me the chills and the sweats simultaneously whilst also making me feel sick to my stomach but it's so good at the same time
“My deep southern wet” has more than one meaning. She uses wet in the way that you immediately thought of, but also it’s a homophone for “whet” which means to stoke someone’s appetite or desire. It’s also used to refer to the action of sharpening a knife-which subtly foreshadows the danger that she is in. If you look deeper, one of the most brilliant aspects of this album is that almost every line has multiple meanings. Unraveling the layers makes it that much more satisfying.
Timestemps: 1:36 Family Tree (Intro) 4:51 American Teenager 9:33 House in Nebraska 14:14 Western Nights 17:22 Family Tree 20:42 Hard Times 23:59 Thoroughfare 28:25 Gibson Girl 33:41 Ptolemmaea 38:46 August Underground/ Televangelism 42:43 Sun Bleached Flies 47:30 Strangers
