Ethel Cain has never just made music — she has built a world. With the announcement of her second studio album, Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, the enigmatic singer-songwriter is inviting listeners deeper into the mythos of her tragic, Southern Gothic universe. Set for release in August 2025, the album serves as a prequel to her acclaimed 2022 debut, Preacher’s Daughter, expanding the eerie, cinematic tale that has captivated fans and critics alike.
Cain, the stage name and character of sorts created by Hayden Anhedönia, has carved out a singular space in contemporary music, blending dream pop, folk, rock, and ambient with themes of faith, trauma, and the decay of the American dream. Raised in a conservative religious household in Florida, she channels her past into her music, crafting narratives that are as harrowing as they are beautiful.
While Preacher’s Daughter chronicled Ethel’s doomed escape from her oppressive home life, culminating in a horrifying allegory of innocence lost, Willoughby Tucker rewinds time to explore her youth. The title references Cain’s high school boyfriend, a figure first mentioned in “A House in Nebraska,” a devastating ballad of love and longing from Preacher’s Daughter. If the debut album was the tragic ending, this prequel promises to illuminate the wounds that set her on that path.
Cain’s storytelling is deeply immersive, unfolding like a gothic novel written in sound. Her music thrives in contradictions: it is nostalgic yet foreboding, intimate yet grand, deeply personal yet mythic. Through her harrowing lyricism and evocative soundscapes, she conjures a world that feels both distant and disturbingly real.
Alongside the album announcement, Cain revealed the Willoughby Tucker Forever Tour, an ambitious North American and European run beginning Aug. 12 in Seattle and concluding Nov. 9 in Lisbon. In partnership with the Ally Coalition, $1 from every ticket sold will be donated to organizations supporting the transgender community, reinforcing Cain’s commitment to advocacy through art.
This news follows her January 2025 experimental release, Perverts, a raw and unfiltered departure from her usual sound that showcases her continued evolution as an artist.
Cain’s music is more than a collection of songs — it is a sprawling, interconnected narrative steeped in Americana, horror, and religious trauma. Preacher’s Daughter introduced the central storyline: Ethel, a young woman fleeing from her preacher father and a suffocating past, only to meet a brutal and symbolic demise. Now, Willoughby Tucker seeks to uncover the moments before the fall — the love, the loss, and the fractures that led to her inevitable escape.
Thematically, Cain’s work explores: Religion as oppression, the weight of faith looms over her characters, both a source of identity and a force of control; the corruption of innocence, Ethel’s journey is one of self-destruction and loss, her purity eroded by the world around her; the dark side of the American dream, her music painting a stark portrait of small-town decay, addiction, and violence; and feminine Tragedy and gothic horror, like the heroines of classic Southern Gothic literature, Ethel is doomed to suffer.
Cain has described her discography as part of a larger “Ethel Cain” Universe, with each album serving as a chapter in an overarching mythos. Fans have embraced this literary approach, analyzing lyrics and piecing together the tragic puzzle of Ethel’s life, like scholars studying a lost manuscript.
With Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You, Cain is not just revisiting the past — she is deepening the mystery, weaving another layer into a story that refuses to fade. As August approaches, listeners prepare to step back into the world of Ethel Cain, knowing full well that love and ruin often walk hand in hand.