After first hearing it while straight out of Catholic school in 2022, singer Hayden Silas Anhedönia, better known as Ethel Cain’s, first album, Preacher’s Daughter, quickly became one of my favorite works of all time. While I did not interact with it much for a while as I started college and learned more about myself as a person, I re-listened to it this summer, and it has been on repeat pretty much nonstop ever since. It is truly an incredible album, and if you have not listened to Hayden’s music, I highly recommend it. She is a fantastic songwriter, singer, musician, and storyteller– I pick up new things in each song every time I listen, and I have heard each a possibly concerning number of times.
A few words of caution before we get into this little ranking I’ve cooked up. First of all, the subject matter on Preacher’s Daughter very much warrants a content warning, as it heavily discusses various themes that may be triggering– including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, manipulation, religious trauma, dying, and death. If you do not feel up to discussing or thinking about these themes, I would recommend skipping both the album and this article. While I will try to keep things fairly spoiler-free and will not go into excessive detail regarding the contents of this album, I will be touching upon most of these topics– read on with caution. For those unfamiliar who would like the basic premise (spoiler and content warning): the album tells the story of a character named Ethel Cain (not the singer– Ethel Cain is her musical persona, of sorts) who grew up in the 1980s and 90s in the American south, as the daughter of a pastor. She was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by her father growing up, but remained in the church until she was a teenager, several years after his death. After having a series of several lovers, many of whom were abusive, she ends up on the run after becoming an accomplice in her then-partner Logan’s criminal activities. She reflects on her past and comes to terms with the abuse she faced from those around her as she flees her hometown, and meets a man named Isaiah while on the road. He is charming, and they fall in love as they travel together to the American west. Once in California, Isaiah begins exploiting Ethel, selling her into prostitution and drugging her, before eventually murdering her and… well, cannibalizing her body. Extremely dark, I know. The album ends with Cain’s spirit ascending to the afterlife, and she makes peace with her life, reflecting on her regrets before finally addressing her murderer. It is an absolutely heartbreaking album, and is not an easy listen, but is definitely a worthwhile one.
One last note– this list is not a ranking of how good each song is or how much I liked it– honestly, I would get so lost making a list like that, as I would probably end up ranking each as number 1. Without further ado… how much each song on Preacher’s Daughter made me cry, from least to most!
13. American Teenager: While this is an incredible song in many, many ways, it is also the most palatable and least outwardly sad. It has an upbeat, poppy quality– reminding me of Bruce Springsteen or Taylor Swift. Like many of their songs, too, the lyrics pack a strong gut-punch to the ideals and romanticization of American society and culture, from the idea of “putting too much faith in the make-believe” to direct criticism of war and the military-industrial complex to showing up to church wasted and feeling deeply alone despite going through the motions. It is definitely worth a listen– and while many of its themes are both deeply depressing and deeply relatable, it is just far less outwardly devastating than many of the other tracks.
12. Thoroughfare: Also an incredible song, with lyricism and structure that make you feel as if you are right there with Ethel on those muggy roads, legs sore but still working as you make your way to anywhere but your past. Knowing what comes after it definitely makes it far sadder, but it could almost be any old unlikely American love story on its own. In my opinion, though, that almost makes it more jarring– where is the happy ending? How did this go so wrong?
11. Family Tree (intro): This does make me cry more than it should– something about it feels so deeply like my experience coming of age in a Catholic school, even though I was and am not Catholic myself, and ending up rejecting it so hard when I finally got out that I ended up falling into different kinds of trauma. While that is more personal, it is definitely where my mind goes a lot of the time when listening to this track. Thinking of it in Ethel’s perspective, too, and in the context of the album is fascinating– it feels almost like a trippy, weird echo of everything that led up to the events of the record. I love it.
10. Family Tree: This song makes me cry to a similar extent to the intro version– it is so fascinating to listen to, and I tend to fall into it as s0on as “these crosses all over my body…” hits. The ending portion, where Ethel gets more desperate in her cries, always gets me too.
9. Gibson Girl: I’m pretty sure this song altered my brain chemistry. The part that usually gets me in my feels is when the low, sultry voice Ethel uses for the majority of the track breaks into a higher pitched, vulnerable plea to be at least accepted even among the deep dehumization she is experiencing here. Heartbreaking, I tell you, and yet so good. I think this track hits harder after having heard the album in full and realizing that, while it is heartbreaking in itself in that it chronicles Ethel being sold as a prostitute, it is the beginning of her end, and that she never did get to experience even the bare minimum part of that plea.
8. A House in Nebraska: This song is sonically stunning, with the lyricism to match… and that makes it rife for having Big Feelings. The cries for something that once was, hindsight being 20/20 and the desire for even the worst of what used to be, the struggle of still caring about someone who hurt you terribly… the sheer LONELINESS of losing that and not being able to find direction? SO GOOD, SO DEVASTATING. This is the first Ethel Cain song I ever heard, and it made me fall in love with her work.
7. Western Nights: While this is not the song I listen to the most on the album– it may be one of the few at the moment that has not at some point gone on repeat for literal hours on end– it is beautiful and heartbreaking in how it both moves the story along and the way it portrays Ethel realizing how much she has been through and how much she was wronged within those things, but still neither knowing how to leave nor even necessarily wanting to because what about the good, and what is there if not that? Rip my heart into pieces, it’s fine.
6. August Underground: I am usually not all that into instrumental tracks– maybe it is the deep love for words or the English major in me, but I live for lyricism. This, though? STRONG exception. I will admit, part of the reason it probably makes me cry so much is because it follows “Ptolemaea,” which I will get to later, but that is part of what makes it so good. It is haunting, disturbing (especially with the context of what is going on), and truly does feel like a horrible kind of delirium. I think the closest I have felt to this was when I had sepsis and was both painfully aware and unaware at the same time of what was going on– and felt a sense of impending doom I knew was bad, but was not conscious enough to put into words because of how sick I was. The fade off at the end of this song as Ethel dies, too… HAUNTING.
5. Televangelism: This is another exception to my usual “not being into instrumental music” rule. The peace and almost heavenly tone this track has, along with the piano overlay, are absolutely haunting and heartbreaking– beautiful and horrible at the same time. The fact that most of this track was improvised, too, is INCREDIBLE.
4. Hard Times: I will be so honest– there is no way this could be any further up on this list given the subject matter of it. It is heartbreaking in every way. There is not much more to say about it– no one deserves to go through the things talked about in this song. “Nine going on eighteen…”
3. Ptolemaea: These last three songs are very difficult to put in an order. Based on some of the experiences I have had, this song is both genuinely difficult to listen to and oddly very healing. It is, of course, a horrifying song to listen to, but… to get really vulnerable really fast, it really is, to me, how it feels to be afraid of a man. Though it is not explicitly what is being described here, and has more layers than this, I genuinely cannot listen to this song without thinking of my own experiences with sexual assault– and I know I am not the only one who has felt this. It is an incredible piece of work, even as difficult as it can be to hear.
2. Sun Bleached Flies: I am both fascinated by this song in the imagery within it– look, imagery involving flies can be so interesting, at least if you are a nerd about ecopoetry and literature and animal imagery in both in general, and cannot listen to it without wanting to cry uncontrollably. The desire to do right by what you know, and the competing desire to run away and bury that even without knowing how, and the sting of the grass not being greener… I will literally lose my mind. The lines, “God loves you, but not enough to save you,” and “If it’s meant to be, then it will be… I forgive it all as it comes back to me,” absolutely SHATTER me. The regrets? The forgiveness and desire for even the worst of the worst, praying to go back to the eighth circle of Hell because at least the fire isn’t as hot as the ninth, and NEVER HAVING KNOWN anything better? Losing my mind.
1. Strangers: The double meanings of the lines in this song, the intro of a preacher promising a better place for those who believe combined with the absolute horror of both Ethel’s church and post-church experiences, and most of all, the desire to be known, loved, and to be GOOD after all of that? I will confess I have had many a 3am cry to this, and I can relate to some aspects of it a little harder than I’d like to admit. The address to her mother at the end also absolutely breaks me to pieces.