Bruce Springsteen: “I fought my whole life, studied, played, worked, because I wanted to hear and know the whole story. My story. Our story. And understand as much of it as I could. I wanted to understand in order to free myself of its most damaging influences, its malevolent forces, to celebrate and honor its beauty, its power. And to be able to tell it well to my friends, my family, and to you. I don’t know if I’ve done that, and the devil is always just a day away, but I know this was my young promise to myself, to you. This, I pursued as my service. This, I presented as my long and noisy prayer, my magic trick. Hoping it would rock your very soul and then pass on, its spirit rendered, to be read, heard, sung and altered by you and your blood, that it might strengthen and help make sense of your story. Go tell it.” (Born to Run, 79)
Hayden Anhedönia: “Ethel Cain is kind of my dark, evil twin. She’s not evil, per se, but we have both been through similar situations. If I didn’t choose to heal and forgive and forget, I would be ultimately destroyed, which is what happens to her. She is the mirrored version of what my life would be like if I chose not to get better.
It’s this all-American girl who crumbles under the weight of God and country. The American Dream is unachievable — being a perfect daughter, a perfect Christian, all of these weights that are put onto young American people are impossible. I like to think of this album as a cautionary tale of what would happen if you don’t free yourself from these imaginary chains, in terms of religion, family and expectation.
Everything I have done has been working up to this album. Everything in my whole life has been leading up to finishing this record." (Billboard)
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