‘Fuck Me Eyes’: unpacking the lore of the new Ethel Cain song
Each new Ethel Cain track is more than just a song. Sure, it can be that if you want, leaving people welcome to simply enjoy the atmospheric energy of her work. But for those locked in, each release is a puzzle piece, part of a bigger story.
Ethel Cain isn’t Ethel Cain. The name is a character and the protagonist of Preacher’s Daughter, the debut album from Hayden Silas Anhedönia. The album tells Cain’s story; the story of a young girl raised in a strict religious town facing abuse from her family and heartbreak until she runs away. But even after, the album tracks how the cycle of trauma plays out to a disastrous, even monstrous, end. Each song is like a chapter in a book, and the story even means so much to Anhedönia that she’s mentioned before that she’s working on an actual novel of it.
Given the importance placed on telling Cain’s story, it means that there is intention behind everything. While the interim project, Perverts, was a chance for the worldbuilder to step out of that a moment and explore other interests, the announcement of her second album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, saw a return to the tale that went back even further. The album is a prequel, really, focusing on Cain’s life pre-Preacher’s Daughter and the devastating first love that prompted the heartbreak her debut began with.
If there’s one thing that’s clear about Anhedönia and the Ethel Cain project, it’s that analysis is welcome, encouraged even. On the release of ‘Nettles’, Anhedönia took to the internet to give a thorough line-by-line breakdown of exactly what the lyrics mean, the story being told, and the different interpretations to be found.
Unravelling the lore behind Ethel Cain’s poppiest moment yet
It’s intoxicating, honestly. With each new release, there is more to dive into and so even with the release of ‘Fuck Me Eyes’, one of Cain’s most outright, pop-leading hits yet, driven by gorgeous 1980s inspired synths, there is lore to be found.
It’s about as far to the other side as an artist could swing in terms of its relation to ‘Nettles’, the last single. While that track was a slow-building devastating number, ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ is fun, hooky and more in the world of other crowd-moving tracks like ‘Crush’ or ‘American Teenager’. It fits in their worlds lyrically, too. Both those more upbeat songs are more observational. They’re Cain reflecting on other people, other crushes or her town, rather than turning it too harsh on the character’s deep inner world.
‘Fuck Me Eyes’ is the same as Cain looks out at the town’s popular girl, a character called Holly Reddick, and contemplates her existence instead. Here is a character who represents everything she could never be as a girl trapped in a restrictive family. The first verse gets into that instantly as she sings, “She really gets around town in her old Cadillac / In her mom’s jeans that she cut to really show off her ass”. Singing about the girl’s perfect makeup, high heels and her “hair up to god”, Cain watches on in a mix of seemingly both awe and total envy as her red nails, ability to impress the boys and mostly, her titular “fuck me eyes”.
As far as the song’s place in the story of Cain, the artist herself explained in the song’s press release. “This song represents Ethel’s complicated feelings for the girl she’s convinced has caught her crush’s eye, as well as her 16-year-old thoughts on the matter,” she explained. With still no tracklist revealed, but with the knowledge that Cain does end up with Willoughby Tucker before his implied death, I’d predict that ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ comes early on, representing the torturous anxiety and insecurity that often comes in the unsettled moments of a new crush.
But in this track, there’s also a wider revelation about the album’s inspirations. “This one’s for you, Kim Carnes,” Cain wrote on Instagram, dedicating the track to the singer of ‘Better Davis Eyes’, a song she calls “one of my favourite pop songs of all time”. This track is a homage to that one as she covered it throughout her last tour and has clearly taken influence from the 1981 hit. Dealing in that same mix of admiration and envy, the lyrics about blonde hair, perfect lips and a general jealousy-tinged awe, the two songs are kindred twins.
From a sad song as single one to a pop song for single two, the two teasers of the album sit at two opposite poles, both providing a glimpse into the tale within to be unravelled. Only time will tell what the whole story will be.
