"Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You"
Review Part 1 by Ms. Meeda
This shit fucking depressed me. I finished my bag of spicy Funyons, a bag of peanut M&Ms, and downed half a Brisk fruit drink.
Hayden has such a way of captivating and capturing the essence of being a fucked up teenager. Ethel's love story with Willoughby captured how love will NEVER be enough.
It doesn't save, it doesn't render, and it doesn't heal.
Down below I will write reviews for each song and include photos to help emulate my feelings for each.
This will be separated into 3 posts, covering the 3 Main Acts within this album.
God this album did not disappoint but it did depress.
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Song 1: "Janie" (5:00)
Someone said "doomed yuri" on a reddit thread and I honestly can see it. She does state at the end "she was my sister first", but honestly it sounds like Janie was this girl with green hair that got away. #SubwaybyChappellRoan.
But also adding onto that "sister" concept, I think her misunderstanding of her love for Janie coincides with her trauma of SA from her father.
I honestly see "Janie" as a subconscious homeorotic poem of Ethel describing her unrequited love for Janie. But she herself is either not fully aware of this love/doesn't feel safe exploring since this does take place in conservative southern 90's America.
And as we know in "Preacher's Daughter" Ethel is naturally drawn to toxic men such as Logan and Isaiah. Those who emulate masculinity and confidence, but also a physically violent nature and a dominating presence. Which is sadly stemmed from her father and having a missing "healthy" father figure in her life. Hayden is also not afraid to stray away from the topics of family based abuse and how it unhealthily merges the lines of love, assault, and identity of relations/ties to familial/parent figures.
With that being said, Ethel speaks of Janie so highly stating "I will always love you", similar to the title of the album and her romantic love with Willoughby. She also states "I will wait" which I saw on a Genius lyric analysis to be of her begging to Janie and/or Janie's boyfriend to not take her away. So yea there's that :(
I don't even need to add to that narrative. It already explains itself.
I wonder if she had not been SA'd by her father and wasn't deterred by her conservative environment, if she could have been able to explore her feelings for Janie.
And I would also like to highlight the significance of "Janie" being the first in the album. This stance indicates her significance within Ethel's life, and therefore within all of Preacher's Daughter. She is technically now the first person to be mentioned canonically within the whole Ethel Cain timeline (so far), and I honestly think that is to show how much everything could've been different had she been able to stick with Janie.
*NOTE: Honestly though she could just see her as a sister so if this blows up don't hate me on this review lol.*
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Song 2: "Willoughby's Theme" (4:44)
Starts off with slow, traditional piano verses, and then riffs off into a metal guitar wails.
No lyrics.
There are 2 personal perspectives to this song.
Perspective 1: Story Telling
The beginning of the song with the slow piano symbolizes the transition of loss that Ethel feels for her closest friend (and potential love) Janie. Since Janie is with her boyfriend now, my girl Ethel ain't got no one to hang out with anymore.
She's trying to figure out life without her only trusted friend nearby.
But that's also when she unexpectedly meets and gets to know Willoughby.
Ethel sees/meets Willoughby for the first time and the electric guitar is supposed to mimic that fiery burning of passion. The feeling that you get when you see that one person that sets your chest with heat. It's curious and low. But it looms.
But this also narrates how Ethel NEEDS another individual besides her. She doesn't feel "whole" or "seen" without someone in her life. Which again, sadly alludes to her SA trauma and the entirety of "Preacher's Daughter" with Logan and Isaiah.
Perspective 2: Willoughby Tucker as a whole.
If we thought Ethel is the #hauntingthenarritive queen, this song truely encapsulates Willoughby as a person and how he steals that title.
We learn of who Willoughby is by just hearing the song. He is sorrowful, beautiful, daunting, but altogether someone that is able to be loved so much to be able to create an entire album dedicated in his honor.
There are no specific words/lyrics to describe Willoughby. Just fiery electrical guitar notes and gentle piano touches.
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Song 3: "Fuck Me Eyes" (6:04)
This song reminds me of Charli xcx's "Girl, so confusing" but without the Lorde feature.
Something that I always forget when I'm listening to Ethel Cain is that realistically, Ethel is a white conservative Christian woman. Yes she struggles with her religion and deals with major drug usage, but hey, so do most white conservative Christians.
Which makes it all the telling of how in this song she is basically slut shaming a young girl named "Holly".
There are 3 women introduced within the canonical Ethel Cain timeline lore:
1.) Ethel Cain's Mother ("Family Tree" & "Strangers")
2.) Janie ("Janie")
3.) And now Holly ("Fuck Me Eyes")
And somehow with each of these individuals, she had her own vendetta with each.
In most of Ethel's songs that include Willoughby, Logan, and Isaiah, she immediately starts off verbally idolizing each man. Glazing over their unique toxic characteristics, until the consequences bite her in the butt.
But with the female figures in her life, she is either judging or pleading of something from them. And it isn't clear until "Fuck Me Eyes" that she projects a lot of her insecurities onto each of these women. Either through judgement, forgiveness, or subtle commentary, Ethel finds something to critique.
This whole song is Ethel relinquishing her jealousy of Holly's "wild" lifestyle and fear of Holly taking Willoughby from her. Which altogether is inherently deeply rooted in a lot of internalized misogyny.
I personally try not to make jokes involving Ethel Cain and especially with "Fuck Me Eyes"...but I seriously wish Ethel and Holly could've fixed it on the remix like damn :(
I was feeling low-key bad for Ethel because she was genuinely just feeling sorry for herself :/
Ngl this is what Ethel was low-key giving throughout the song:
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But in all seriousness, after "Fuck Me Eyes" ends, this is where the whole fucking tone shifts and I believe we end Act 1 and enter Act 2 with "Nettles".
"Nettles" could be included with Act 1, but I personally feel that there is too much of an emotional, guttural narrative change for it to be included into Act 1.
And honestly this is where I feel like Willoughby begins gaining his title in the "haunting the narrative" category in competition with my girls Ethel, Laura, and Jackie.
But I'll make a Part 2 as soon as I can get my shit together cuz bro Hayden did NOT come to play.
