i wrote two essays about how preacher’s daughter impacted my life for someone’s school study (while i was 🍃) and there was so much oversharing (because it’s anonymous & i’m unstoppable) so i want to post them here to feel better
To properly describe the way Preacher’s Daughter has been imprinted into my heart, I can only begin by explaining the things that I’ve experienced in my lifetime that Hayden’s music has immensely helped me grieve and process. To give you the rundown on who I am, I’m a gay, neurodivergent, and ex-Christian teenage boy, who was raised in an Evangelical Christian family in absolutely-nowhere, Florida. The dots connect themselves, but nothing has ever encapsulated this niche of my life like Hayden’s work on Preacher’s Daughter has. The first time I resonated with her music was just last autumn, when I had left my home to live with my father. I was fighting with my mother, to the point of severe mental dysfunction, and I had listened to Family Tree (Intro) for the first time. Hayden sings, “Jesus can always reject his father— but he cannot escape his mother’s blood”. I was left in complete awe. I had found an album that would change my life, with songs that would help me to put my experiences into words as haunting as my memories.
Not to mention, the storytelling of Ethel’s life is outstanding. The complexity of an album about parent failures and unreliable narratives and religious trauma woven into a twisted story of a young girl groomed into carnage is unmatched. Ethel Cain is brought to life and portrayed so personally that a listener can’t help but relate to her. Of course, not *every* listener is going to relate, as there is still extremely sensitive subject matter, which Hayden worked on with an impressive amount of respect and nuance.
I think one of the most underrated songs on the album is Hard Times. Not only is it a vulnerable look into the troubles of Ethel Cain, but it’s a relatable highlight to a core childhood wound of hers. Something about the acoustic strumming and Hayden’s strong humming feels like the burning pain of missing the “good” version of somebody. While there are multiple people this song has helped me grieve, I’ll talk about how I can relate to Ethel herself. As I previously mentioned, I lived with my father for a couple months. For most of my life, I strongly disliked my father. On my middle school graduation day, years ago, he had told me that he knew I was gay, and that he accepted and supported me. My entire relationship with him changed. Over 2 years later, I moved in with him, he became him again, and it wasn’t meant to be. I’m safe, and I’ve moved, but ever since I left I’ve had this burning sense of infancy that comes and goes—remembering what it felt like to hate my father during my childhood.
As one does, I grieve through music. Hayden sings, “I’m tired of you, still tied to me”, in a way that grasps my heart like the unbudging tether between father and child. She disappears into character and the song turns into another teenager my age, singing words we both know by heart.
that was the essay about the album in general…kind of just like a part 1 though.
this next essay is about televangelism but ties off the responses as a pair as well
Televangelism. With 11/13 tracks of an album packed with haunting lyrics like “Freezer bride, your sweet divine / You devour like smoked bovine hide / How funny, I never considered myself tough” (Strangers), & “Don’t worry ‘bout it too hard or you’ll never sleep a wink at night again / Don’t worry ‘bout me and these green eyes / Mama just know that I love you / I’ll see you when you get here” (also Strangers), it’s shocking to say I’m going with an instrumental track. . There is just something so deeply somatic about Hayden’s music. I can recall in my darkest moments in my time living at my father’s, laying in my bed with my headphones on listening to Televangelism, disassociating to the lights on my ceiling. I remember, it was a lot colder because my bedroom was in the garage and it was the middle of winter. I liked it cold, though. I would put on my headphones and listen to Televangelism on loop, feeling the warmth of Ethel’s ascension to Heaven fill my ears and radiate down my spine. It was escapism, survival even. It took my mind off of where I was and reminded me there was better days ahead.
To fully communicate the extent of Televangelism’s impact on me, I want to be very vulnerable about some of the things I have went through. If religious trauma is a sensitive subject I apologize in advance.
I grew up having nearly-daily panic attacks because of the things I had been taught about the Christian God. From 9 years old up to around this time last year, I would go in and out of having major panic attacks about going to hell or being left behind in the rapture. After the resolution of a religious psychosis episode in summer of last year, I had discovered information that had broken the hold that the Christian religion had on me, and I began to heal from my religious trauma.
While “Preacher’s Daughter” as a whole has played a role in my healing process, Televangelism stands out above all tracks. A song composed so beautifully it mimics the sensation of ascending to Heaven, signifying the end of Ethel Cain’s suffering on Earth. It is identical to the feeling of being without extreme fear and anxiety that I discovered for the first time last year. Every time I listen to Televangelism, I get to remember how it felt to discover that my existential worst fear was made up all over again. It was bliss. It was grief. It was heartbreaking, and it was life-changing. This album, while thematically centered around death, symbolizes the magnificence of creation, and how awesome it is to have the ability to bring the story of a character like Ethel Cain to life. I believe that if there is a God out there, “Preacher’s Daughter” was the apology for everything I’ve ever had to grow through.
okay thank you i hope nobody sees this
