In 2023, the Guardian interviewed Hayden Anhedönia, who records as Ethel Cain. She was, in theory, riding high on the critical success of her self-released debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, and the cult following that sprung up in its wake, entranced by its macabre lyrics, drifting, gothy sound – Lana Del Rey if she had ameliorated her latest bad-boyfriend woes by listening to the Cocteau Twins and sundry shoegazing bands – and Anhedönia’s strikingly unfiltered image. A sometime model, she has the names of both the angel Gabriel and a demon from various apocryphal Jewish and Islamic texts tattooed across her forehead, has talked openly about being trans and autistic, and is given to hair-raising social media posts in which she has variously called for the assassination of Joe Biden, armed insurrection in America and, most recently, the release of Luigi Mangione, the chief suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
And yet, Anhedönia did not seem to be riding high in 2023. She protested at length about both the scale of her success, her popularity on social media and the intrusive nature of her most obsessive fans: complaints we’ve heard again and again from female artists including Mitski and Chappell Roan. She talked about wishing she “had a much smaller fanbase” and wasn’t viewed as a pop star, even an alt-pop star.
