With each passing moment, singer Ethel Cain— or, rather, Hayden Silas Anhedönia— seems to never let go of her spot in trending songs upon various social media platforms. Songs like “Ptolomaea”, “Strangers”, and “Sun-Bleached Flies” latch onto the younger generations with music inspired by gospel, country, alternative rock, and classic rock. A large inspiration for Cain was Florence + The Machine, and she is even featured in the song “Morning Elvis”.
Cain was born on March 24, 1998, with the hometown of Tallahassee, Florida. The oldest of four siblings, daughter (then son) of a church preacher in Perry, Florida, and homeschooled, Cain was rarely allowed into the outside world, and communication with any of those that did not attend church was out of the question.
At age 12, Cain decided to come out to her mother as gay, shifting the town into a disastrous state for her— marking herself as a social pariah. She was frequently stalked by other children’s parents on social media, almost as if they were on a witch hunt. At 18, Cain decided to leave the town of Perry and find work an hour away. By the time she was 20, she had publicly come out as a trans woman and legally changed her name to Hayden Silas Anhedönia.
Cain’s journey with music starts in GarageBand, under the name White Silas. Tracks were exclusively released to only close family and friends, until she released a 2019 EP called Golden Age. During this time, she was also working on her biggest project yet— the debut album of 2022 called Preacher’s Daughter. As Cain phrased it, this version of the fictional character Ethel Cain was meant to be the bad ending of herself— a scapegoat, and a way for her to face her trauma.
In the COVID-19 Pandemic, Cain signed onto a label with Dr. Luke, the same one accused of abusing Kesha, where she released a second EP titled Inbred in 2021. However, Cain would soon leave this record and create her own, Daughters of Cain, where she released further works including Preacher’s Daughter. The upcoming song “Punish” on November 1st is also set to be released onto this record label, and later on the new album Perverts on January 8th.