Ethel Cain - Nettles

Hayden Anhedönia has been making music under the name Ethel Cain since 2019. But it’s not just a band name or a moniker; Ethel Cain is a fictional character, a sort of alter ego that Hayden’s been creating and world building around throughout her albums. The first Ethel Cain album, Preacher’s Daughter, came out in 2022. It ended up blowing up, and it made Hayden the first openly trans artist with an album in the top ten on the Billboard chart. In 2025, she put out the second Ethel Cain album, called Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. For this episode, I talked to Hayden about how she made the song “Nettles.” As you’re about to hear, it took on a lot of different forms, over several years, before she got to the final version. For more info, visit songexploder.net/ethel-cain. https://songexploder.net/ethel-cain

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform.

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 1:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/songexploder. That's LinkedIn.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply.

• 2:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Hayden Anadonia has been making music under the name Ethel Kane since 2019. But it's not just a band name or a moniker. Ethel Kane is a fictional character, a sort of alter ego that Hayden's been creating and world-building around throughout her albums. The first Ethel Kane album, Preacher's Daughter, came out in 2022. It ended up blowing up, and it made Hayden the first openly trans artist with an album in the top 10 on the Billboard chart. In 2025, she put out the second Ethel Kane album, called Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You. It's a prequel to the first album. For this episode, I talk to Hayden about how she made the song "Nettles." As you're about to hear, it took on a lot of different forms over several years before she got to the final version.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  My name is Hayden Anadonia, also known as Ethel Kane. And the project of Ethel Kane is like this big, kind of sweeping narrative.

• 4:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And what era is the world of Ethel Kane set in?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Willoughby Tucker spans from 1986 to 1990. So it goes through her last two years of high school and her first two years of adulthood. And it spans that four-year gap of her relationship with the titular character, Willoughby Tucker. It starts with her desperation to be loved. And then it moves into her neglect of her lover. And the way she casts his real person to the wayside to fall in love with a projected version of him.

• 4:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And what made you decide to put it in that era to begin with?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the first love story that I ever saw was my parents. And so I always heard a lot of stories about my parents falling in love and all that stuff, like towards the end of the 80s, early 90s. That was their love story. And that was when my mom was in high school. So I always just loved the idea of love set against that backdrop. That's all the stories that I heard, all the pictures that I saw growing up. It very much was, I just found that time period fascinating. And I always thought that was like a cool backdrop for a story.

• 5:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And where does the story take place?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  It takes place in Shady Grove, Alabama, which is actually a real place. There is a real Shady Grove, Alabama, but it's not that specific one. Shady Grove, to me, is a very nowhere USA. My family is from Shady Grove, Florida. And Shady Grove has that feeling of an era gone by. But again, it's like a fictionalized version of it.

• 5:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What do you remember about the first day that you started working on Nettles?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I remember I had just moved into my house in Alabama, like not even a week before. I had no furniture set up. It was August. I think I wrote Nettles August 17, 2021. I remember going outside and it was a beautiful, hot day. And it felt so good to be back in the South. And I was just so happy to be home. And I was like running around my yard barefoot and I stepped on like a spiky plant. And I thought it was a nettle. It was turned out to be a thistle, but I thought, oh, spiky plant, that's a nettle. And I got in my head this idea of nettles. And so I just started to kind of write this little ditty.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  You know, it was probably like three, four PM, it was hot. And the sun was shining and it was coming through my lace curtains and I had my guitar and my laptop on the floor and I said, I just want to write something that just feels like a returned home. And I started just kind of strumming the guitar.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I found this little rhythm and I always usually make simple tunings because I don't play the guitar that well. I'm not really good with like my fingers like that. So I made this weird little tuning and I was just sliding back and forth between these couple chords. I always kind of tend to gravitate towards love songs about, you know, I'm someone who's been through stuff and I'm in love with someone who's been through stuff and all the anxiety and difficulty of that of like loving someone through their trauma, loving someone through mine. Because of, again, my parents' love story and the love story of most of the people in my hometown, it's just,

• 7:14Speaker 01

  you know, you're in high school in a small town, you grow up, your boyfriend gets a blue collar job, you are a stay-at-home wife or you do your little thing and just this very simple love of you go to work, you come home, you're in your trailer together, you love each other. You go through the trials and tribulations of small-town life and that to me is so romantic.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  When I was a kid, there was a gas plant near our house, the trailer I grew up in. My mom would always tell me about this time that it blew up. When I was really little, and it exploded, and I remember thinking like, you know, all the guys that worked there.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  You know, it was kind of this idea of, "Oh, I'm in love, and we're children, we're in a race to grow up." But then, quickly, the real world sets in. The plant blew up, a piece of shrapnel flew and slowed that part of you. Suddenly, the real world creeps in, we realize we're not immortal. This isn't timeless, this isn't forever. (Singing) But when the plant blew up,

• 8:32Speaker 01

  A piece of shrapnel flew and slowed that part of you. The doctors gave you until the end of the night, but not till daylight, not till daylight.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You know, we're just two people at the mercy of life, and we're getting scared, this is getting hard. Love is not just, you find it and then you have it, and life is good because of it. It's difficult, and it's scary, and things can happen, things can take your love away from you. And how terrifying that is, and is it still worth this pain?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  (Singing) Tell me all the time not to worry. And think of all the time I'll have with you. When I won't wake up on my way home, I wake up on my own. How close all the time when I'm half of you.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  It was me trying to work out the ways that I always predicted I would be in love. And how badly I wanted it, but I think how badly it scared me.

• 9:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So at the time when you were writing this, had you experienced something like that yourself?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  No, I'd never, you know, I've had my brushes with love and met people and got scared and ran away almost immediately because I kind of had this inkling of an idea that this is too much for me and I'm scared. And if I even tried, I knew I was gonna make a mess. So I just had a really good idea of what I was gonna have to work through, accepting people for as they are, not as you want them to be. And so I kind of gave myself a playground to play it out. You know, me kind of saying, "Life is hard. I've been through stuff. I've made a fool of myself. I've been treated so badly and I would never do that to anyone.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And you've been through stuff and you've been hurt. We have a past and a present." And then saying, "This is so overwhelming and it's so hard. Just tell me all the time not to worry. Just tell me all the time and think about the day where we can find our patch of paradise, where I can spend all my time with you and none of this will matter. The two of us together will be enough." So it started with with personal experiences. And then they kind of get, you know, twisted into the Ethel Kane story because she is, at the end of the day, a part of me. The demo as it was came to be in like an hour. And I put it on my SoundCloud and just said, "Oh, you know, first week in the new house. This is like a little scrap of a song that I wrote.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Here's how I'm feeling." And, you know, that scrap just kind of sat there like that for a while.

• 11:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Because for me, it would be really hard to be like, "Oh, here's an unfinished thing." And then share it with people.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  So for me, the Nettles demo isn't really a demo. It's just a different version of Nettles. But that is also a complete, finished version of Nettles for what it is. The emotion, the intention, it's all intact there. I think sometimes people consider amazing production or crazy composition or whatever to have more integrity. And it does require more talent and more creativity to really go there and flesh something out. But right now, this is what I have to say. If I need to revisit it, if I have more to say, I will say more on the topic. But until then, she'll sit pretty, just the way that she is, because I love her in this form too.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  And so the first verse in chorus was what I had for years before I finished the song. And then, two years later, I was in Mexico, coming back from a festival that we just played. I don't know why it crossed my mind, but I thought, I need to listen to this. And I listened to it and said, why is this not on Willoughby? This has such a place in it. And I wanted to explore that kind of difficult, immature, desperate desire. So that's kind of why we went back in time to explore her when she's kind of transitioning from her childhood to adulthood and the way that that affects this interpersonal relationship that she has. And that's when I dredged it back up and started working on it.

• 13:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And so how did you start? What was your first step for that?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  So I was playing Coachella. And I was listening to a lot of like, super dreamy, dream pop, because I was having a hard year, and that's kind of one of my go-tos. And I just love to listen to super soft indie rock. And I said, all right, let's do like a soft indie rock version of the song.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  So kind of simple drums with a ride, put some more reverb on it, make it really just kind of twinkly like that.

• 13:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And were you doing that with real drums? Or were you programming drums?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  That was real drums. My good friend Stephen Collier, he did this demo with me. I just recorded some lazy vocals.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Just kind of wanted to test out that idea of what if it wasn't so folksy? What if it was more of kind of this indie, like cigarettes after sex kind of vibe? Or like kind of beach house? Because, you know, I'm a big fan of both of those artists. Especially when I'm in the desert. You know, I'd never been to Coachella, so I was listening to them a lot and thought, oh, this would be so pretty.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  But after I made it, I thought, this has no heart. This has no substance. This isn't Nettles. And so that's kind of why I scrapped that one. That one was very short-lived.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  But then I thought, well, I missed the old demo. So I put the original guitar back and slowed it down.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  That's when I kind of started to marry this kind of slower, dreamier quality, but with like the twang of the original.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  So I was in Pittsburgh when I made this. I had moved there end of 2022. I started to build over the drums and layer stuff with Stephen.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And that's where I wrote the second verse.

• 15:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  After you made that, did it feel complete? Or was it still missing something for you?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I felt like the foundation was there, but then I thought, okay, now this needs some kind of flair.

• 15:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What do you mean by flair?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I thought it just needed a pedal steel or maybe some banjo. I kind of want to bring it back to this kind of country-ish, twangy place, but keep this beautiful lushness of it.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  This version lived for a while. This version lived through the majority of 2023. But then I thought, maybe it needs to be slower. Maybe it needs to be sadder. Maybe it needs to be devastating.

• 16:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Why did you think it needed to be devastating? Especially for a love song?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Well, at that point, I think that I was starting to kind of go through my bout of insecurity with being labeled a pop artist or whatever, and worried that people thought that I was just always making these little ditties. And I thought, well, I need to make something slower and sadder. And like, it needs to be less accessible. I don't want to make something so beautiful. I don't want people to be happy listening to this. I want them to be miserable. So that's where this super slow demo came from.

• 17:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was that miserable feeling also a reflection of how you felt at the time?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, after Preacher Jodder came out, I got so depressed because I'd been working on it for years and years and put my whole heart into it. And then just a bunch of stuff happened with my career, adjusting to it, adjusting to being an artist whose work is being dissected. And I very much got into a mindset of, I hate this. I hate my job. I hate making music. I hate all of this. And I was so angry and sad, and I just felt so empty and depressed. And it affected all of my music.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Tell me all the time, all the time, not to worry, not to worry. Think of all the time I've had with you. Will you wake up now, wake up now? How close all the time, no way.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  It was all for you.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  But very quickly, everybody in my life was like, this is not it. We don't, we don't want this version of this demo.

• 18:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Ethel Kane continues after this.

• 18:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Song Exploder is sponsored by DistroKid. If you're an independent artist, DistroKid is now offering a new way to start selling merch without dealing with inventory or running an online store. DistroKid Direct automatically turns your existing album artwork into merch products like shirts and hoodies, posters, totes, all kinds of things. And you choose what to sell, you set your prices, you connect PayPal, and DistroKid handles the printing, the shipping, and the customer support. They don't take a commission, so you keep 100% of your merch sales. It's a simple way to add another revenue stream to your music career without adding more work to your plate. Artists can learn more and launch a merch store at distrokid.com/direct.

• 19:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This year, my wife and I are hosting Thanksgiving at our house. And in anticipation of that, I've already started some of the planning. And one of the things that I realized I wanted to have was some kind of small but elegant serving tray that I could put snacks and stuff on while we're just hanging out before the meal starts. So I turned to Wayfair, and I found the perfect thing. These small wooden plates made from acacia. They match the rest of the vibe of my house, and I'm going to be using them even when it's not Thanksgiving. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home, so you can host and celebrate without the stress. If you're hosting for any of the many holidays coming up, take a look at the website to browse for ideas or look for something very specific.

• 20:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can use filters and reviews and photos from other customers to help you find the perfect thing. When you're refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long-haul

• 21:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination, if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be wherever you get podcasts.

• 21:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So what happened after you made that quote unquote miserable sounding demo?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  One of my friends said, "You are very obviously not doing well at all. You're not happy and you are visibly different. The whole year it was just lights on, but nobody's home. So I took a six month break from making music and then I just started working on this record again in January of this year. I kind of looked at everything that I had and knew what I didn't want, what I did want. And I said, "All right, I'm gonna make it simple. Strip everything back to just the banjo and the guitar. Took everything off, had my drummer record new drums, Brian. Brian did the new drums.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  I wanted something that was a bit less lazy and kind of swingy and just more of like a kind of like a pep, kind of a more of an upbeat drum sound. And I was like, "Let me go to Muscle Shoals, you know? That's kind of like a huge hub for kind of like southern rock and country and help more authentic and real. And so I went to Muscle Shoals, had some friends in Muscle Shoals put these instruments on it. Fiddle, more banjo, more acoustic guitar, and pedal steel.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Those were the instruments that we recorded that day.

• 22:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And was there a moment or like a session where you tracked all of your final vocals?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  No, the product is a huge mishmash. It's just like, it's really not that polished. It's just such a like conglomeration of all the different periods that I've worked on it and mindset and whatnot. But there's like some takes that I just can't get over. So I'll leave it and then record new takes. It's kind of what I love about it. I can listen and hear all the different times and memories.

• 23:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Can you tell me about that lyric, "To love me is to suffer me"?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Well, I've always had this very kind of unhealthy view of love as being, "I'm so weak and I'm so pained and I've been through so much." And so, "To love me is to suffer me", being very self-critical and self-deprecating, but then saying, "I need constant validation. I need a man who's big and strong and can handle me and will like, hold me down and protect me and he's so mean to everybody but me." Like, you know, that kind of possibly corny view of love.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  But then I thought, "That can't be real. That's so shallow and two-dimensional." So then I said, "Let's dig a little deeper. Let's say, he's scared of becoming his father."

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Nettles is saying, "I'm afraid. You're afraid. You've been through things, I've been through things. But I love you." And Nettles is still the fantasy. Like, "I don't want to confront the problems. I'd rather you just tell me that it's not real and that one day we'll just magically be together and it won't be hard." And you can kind of get the feeling that Ethel Kane is not going to take the right path because she's avoidant and she's deflective and she would rather live in her head in this delusion. Which is so funny because coincidentally, I'm now in my very first relationship and it is exactly how I thought it was going to be.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And I am acting exactly the way that I predicted I would. And so, it's been very funny, Nettles coincidentally coming out at the same time that I'm feeling all these emotions again, but for real this time, not hypothetical. I mean, the week that it was coming out, I was literally texting him the same stuff. I was saying, "I'm so anxious because for the first time in my life, I have someone that I care about. It's so scary and it's all kind of coming to pass." I just listen to these songs and say, okay, this is the fork in the road. I can either go down this and do this the way I wrote about in the song and ruin it, or I can learn from my own predictions and choose to do it differently. We would listen to the song together. I would always sing Tommy all the time.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Tommy all the time.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  And then he would look at me and go, not to worry.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Not to worry, not to worry. And think of all the time I'll have with you when I won't wake up on my own. Wake up on my own.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I always call it a cautionary tale because I say, look, this is what happens if you fall in love and you project things onto them and you don't actually learn who they are and you neglect them as a person. You're going to drive them away. So let me run this scenario in a controlled environment, like in my head, and learn from it before I have to learn from it really in person. That was a much easier way to go about it than actually falling in love for the first time with a good person and ruining it. And even with the cautionary tale, I'm still like, I'm crazy. I'm putting that man through hell right now.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  And so I will run that cautionary tale time and time again if it means I don't have to end up the same way that Ethel Kane ends up.

• 27:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's Nettles by Ethel Kane in its entirety.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  We were in a race to go

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yesterday through today till tomorrow

• 29:16Speaker 02

  But when the plan blew out

• 29:22Speaker 02

  A piece of shrapnel flew and stole that part of you

• 29:29Speaker 02

  The doctors gave you until The end of the night but not till daylight Not till daylight

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Time passes slow in the flicker of a hospital light I pray the race is worth the fight

• 29:59Speaker 02

  I made a fool of myself Down on Tennessee street It wasn't pretty like the movies It was ugly like what they all did to me And they did to me what I wouldn't do to anyone You know that's for sure Tell me all the time Not to worry Think of all the time I'll have with you

• 30:41Speaker 02

  When I won't wake up on my own Wake up on my own I'll close all the time Knowing I'm half of you

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Lay me down where the trees stand low Put me down where the greenery steers I can hear them singing To love me is to suffer me And I believe that I

• 31:59Speaker 02

  When I lay with you In that old lane road Wishing I was still by you Say there you are You can fight a war I'll call myself I've won you for me It's not that hard That picture on the wall you're scared of Looks just like you I wanna bleed, I wanna hurt The way the boys do

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Maybe you're right We should stop watching the news Cause baby, I've never seen Brown eyes look so beautiful Time after time Not to worry, not to worry Think of all the time I'll have with you When I will wake up on my own Wake up on my own Hell blows all the time Knowing I'm half of you

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Think of us inside After the weather It's not for the world to lay a plan to We will wake up on my own Wake up on my own Hell blows all the time Knowing This was all

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Think of us inside

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Caribou's on the town But it makes no difference You have my

• 35:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net to learn more, including some footnotes that go with the episode. You'll also find links to buy or stream Nettles, and you can watch the music video.

• 35:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm listening to and thinking about these days, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You could also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 36:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Radiotopia.

• 36:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  From PRX.