Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You (Aug 2025)
- Thread starter Jonathan27
- Start date
I’m so excited for this. Over 90 minutes of music…for me that’s what I want from her. Something overwhelming and complex, songs that slowly sink in. A world to explore. I can’t wait to just let the music embrace me, to get to know these new songs and analyse the lyrics. And to hear her evolution, both as a songwriter but also as a producer. The imagery so far, I love. It’s very Ethel, but it feels like cold winter, haunted from a distant past.
he/him
For what it's worth, Amber Waves (or at least the first nearly three minutes of it) seems to occupy a similar soundscape and it's been implicitly confirmed to be part of Perverts, so I think you're onto something.
Last edited:
Oh my god. How did you get this confirmed?
he/him
To be totally honest I suppose I should say that it's more of a hunch until we see the tracklisting, but someone asked on her Tumblr a little while back if Amber Waves was about Willoughby, and her response was "no, nothing on this project is connected to the Ethel Cain story", and not too much later she updated the Genius pages for both Punish and Amber Waves.
I hope the fact she's been performing Dust Bowl regularly means that it's for this project too.
he/him
I've been wondering that myself, but she's seemed fairly dead-set on it being about Willoughby so who can never be sure. She referred to it before posting the demo in 2022 as her favorite song she'd written, so it's equally likely she's performing it just because she likes it dd
(Famously I'm awful at predicting her next move, but I have a hunch that the B-sides to Preacher's Daughter will drop not that much longer after Perverts, too.)
he/him
Perverts would get her out of her RX Songs contract, although there will likely be a grace period before she can release anything else. But that's probably only about 6 months.
he/him
I'm actually really curious what her masters situation is, now that you mention it. I can't remember if she's talked about it before
he/him
I think she'd own everything? Her deal with them is only through publishing as far as I'm aware.
Yeah I thought Daughters of Cain set her up well in terms of ownership, it's more that Prescription Songs is a resource for getting the material out there and in what format. Though I'm curious how the Inbred physical seemed to be fairly straightforward to release whereas she's run into so many hurdles with Preacher's Daughter on vinyl, outside of her profile increasing and them trying to milk that (probably the extent of it knowing the source).
he/him
Yeah, she alluded to it essentially being them wanting more money when she first posted the vinyl mock up. Assume she'll work on getting her discography released with an independent retailer when the time comes that she can finally do that.
I think she deleted it but she made a post on Tumblr talking about how she feels people both online and offline aren't taking anything seriously anymore, and she is very tired of people basically making the same jokes about her art all the time. She has been alluding to feeling this way ever since Preacher's Daughter blew up and TikTok/Stan Twitter got ahold of her so it is not surprising, but I am really happy she spoke out about it. I have began feeling a similar way recently about a lot of what I read online - like it's not healthy the way people have been joking about Liam Payne's death online for example and behaviour like this is almost normalised atp - so it is refreshing to see someone put it into words. I am sure she will end up with people saying she is taking things too seriously, that it's 'not that deep' or that she taking herself too seriously but I fear she is just saying what a lot of people might be too afraid to admit. Like her saying we are in an 'irony epidemic' honestly hit hard.
Last edited:
he/him
Yeah, I saw the screenshot and 110% agree with everything she said, as somebody who's been feeling similarly for the last several years (and in general, not just related to Ethel Cain).
Sincerity being seen as "cringe" has been a disaster for human interaction, and specifically when it comes to how people engage with her art, the constant jokes about Panera and ethical cain vinnel and all that bullshit were barely even funny to begin with - much less funny enough to keep running into the ground 2+ years later. Sometimes I struggle with feeling this way, because nobody likes being a gatekeeper, but things actually were so much more chill back in even 2021 with her fanbase, and I miss that. Like, the thing that most likely triggered her rant was because people were calling her newest tattoo of a fishhook a fucking tampon...come the fuck on.
Last edited:
Her post made me think about how this particular place (as hectic as it gets sometimes) is generally an oasis for those of us who like to engage earnestly with culture, to the point that I am on other platforms and don't even use them. In fact, I often bring what I read on those other platforms over here to discuss it with those of you that I know I'm going to get meat out of establishing a conversation with.
It's very difficult to talk about this without sounding elitist or like you are a six fucking hundred year-old humorless mastodon, but not more difficult than trying to engage in conversation with people with zero reference points combined with an eagerness to only get gotcha likes and interactions - a lethal combination. And by the way, I don't think this is a generational issue, but rather a widespread cultural issue brought upon by the internet and how it shapes modern human interaction within and without. I've had as many enriching and complex conversations with people in their early twenties recently as I've had appalling encounters with people my age. I mean, just recently, people in the Kylie thread (I know, shocking!) were using the fact that some of us are able to write structured paragraphs to try and get us in the heat of an argument. And everyone is over seventy on that thread! I'm kidding. Are we supposed to... apologize for knowing how to communicate now?
It's this apathetic unwillingness to allow yourself to explore and truly engage because doing so feels like dragging your brain to a foggy finish line, and claiming that Ethel Cain is a professor of mothermatics in the universlayty of servington hiiiiiiii~* is simply... less taxing. It's very rare to find a place on the internet nowadays where people dissect a body of work such as Preacher's Daughter and how it touches on gender and religion the way we did here - or, to pick a recent example, the conversations we've had about The Substance. Everywhere else is mostly two-line hot takes or genuinely engaged threads that are simply occurring in online spaces where actual cultural communication is actively discouraged.
*
It's very difficult to talk about this without sounding elitist or like you are a six fucking hundred year-old humorless mastodon, but not more difficult than trying to engage in conversation with people with zero reference points combined with an eagerness to only get gotcha likes and interactions - a lethal combination. And by the way, I don't think this is a generational issue, but rather a widespread cultural issue brought upon by the internet and how it shapes modern human interaction within and without. I've had as many enriching and complex conversations with people in their early twenties recently as I've had appalling encounters with people my age. I mean, just recently, people in the Kylie thread (I know, shocking!) were using the fact that some of us are able to write structured paragraphs to try and get us in the heat of an argument. And everyone is over seventy on that thread! I'm kidding. Are we supposed to... apologize for knowing how to communicate now?
It's this apathetic unwillingness to allow yourself to explore and truly engage because doing so feels like dragging your brain to a foggy finish line, and claiming that Ethel Cain is a professor of mothermatics in the universlayty of servington hiiiiiiii~* is simply... less taxing. It's very rare to find a place on the internet nowadays where people dissect a body of work such as Preacher's Daughter and how it touches on gender and religion the way we did here - or, to pick a recent example, the conversations we've had about The Substance. Everywhere else is mostly two-line hot takes or genuinely engaged threads that are simply occurring in online spaces where actual cultural communication is actively discouraged.
*
Which she is!
Last edited:
100% agreed with everything she is saying. I'm sick of the internet. I find reddit a good place to talk about the art, and this forum too.
he/him/basic cishomo
I fucking love her and am grateful for her eloquence and ethos in conveying this. I hate it for her especially because she's doing incredible and important work that literally none of my other faves could do, and I hope she knows that and doesn't let this annoyance at the Internet turn into self-doubt.Yeah, I saw the screenshot and 110% agree with everything she said, as somebody who's been feeling similarly for the last several years (and in general, not just related to Ethel Cain).
Sincerity being seen as "cringe" has been a disaster for human interaction, and specifically when it comes to how people engage with her art, the constant jokes about Panera and ethical cain vinnel and all that bullshit were barely even funny to begin with - much less funny enough to keep running into the ground 2+ years later. Sometimes I struggle with feeling this way, because nobody likes being a gatekeeper, but things actually were so much more chill back in even 2021 with her fanbase, and I miss that. Like, the thing that most likely triggered her rant was because people were calling her newest tattoo of a fishhook a fucking tampon...come the fuck on.