Hayden Anhedönia released the latest installment of the Ethel Cain trilogy on August 8, titled Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. She recently spoke with Genius to dig deep into the meaning behind the track “Nettles.” Released as the first single, “Nettles” is a turning point for the love between Ethel Cain and Willoughby Tucker.
While fans joked that the footage was some of the least grainy video they’ve ever seen of Anhedönia—who occasionally likes to upload videos on YouTube from her bedroom or indulge in Instagram lives—it gives great insight into the lore behind “Nettles.” This, of course, plays into the overall Ethel Cain narrative, an ongoing project that started with Preacher’s Daughter in 2022.
“Ethel Cain … feels kind of weird and on the fringe of her already small town, and feels very down and hard on herself,” Anhedönia began, laying out the groundwork of Ethel as a character. “Then she meets this boy when she’s young, a child, in a fleeting moment. And then he disappears and she doesn’t see him for years.”
She explained that when the boy, Willoughby Tucker, returns to Ethel’s life, she “latches back onto this idea of him, becomes consumed by the idea of loving him and being loved by him.”
Hayden Anhedönia explains “Nettles” as a metaphor for Ethel Cain feeling “difficult to be loved”
Anhedönia spoke about how she first came up with “Nettles” as a concept. At first, it started out as just a phrase on her acoustic guitar. After moving to her house in Alabama, she crafted a “sweet little ditty,” she said. From there, the title came once she accidentally stepped on what she initially thought was a nettle plant. It turned out to be thistle, she said, but the idea stuck.
“[It’s] this kind of spiky painful plant that’s beneficial and good and healthy for you, but also painful,” she explained. “And I thought that was kind of a good metaphor for being someone who feels like you are difficult to be loved but still craving to be loved.”
In the first verse, the lyrics paint a picture of a gas plant that explodes. This is the incident that essentially halts Ethel and Willoughby’s relationship in its tracks. Anhedönia explained that this was inspired by a true story from her childhood. Further on, she stated that the song starts out as a representation of first love. As she described it, “this very childish love that’s very innocent.”
She continued, “But then the real world seeps in; death or accident. Realizing just because you got that love doesn’t mean it can last forever. Just because you did the ‘hard part’ of getting it, now you have something to lose. So that first verse is kind of the bad dream of ‘there are bad things in this world that can take you away from me and that’s terrifying.’ And that kind of sets the stage for the whole song.”
Photo by Gus Stewart/Redferns
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