Preacher's Daughter Album Breakdown

From an Alternative Press interview with Anhedönia: "The story centers around three generations of women, and it starts with the youngest, the daughter. It’s pretty much just a classic American tale. A common theme that I like to write about is intergenerational trauma. Things that have been passed down through generations and how your parents’ or your grandparents’ actions can affect you. It’s very much about this lineage of women and how all their lives interconnect. Each album focuses on a different woman. I want to explore how your actions affect others and the relationship between a mother and her child and how things come full circle.

Overall, it’s definitely a cautionary tale of what happens if you don’t break a cycle and you let it continue to almost a ruinous point. It’s what I see as a dark timeline of what would happen if everything hit its lowest point. So it’s very much bittersweet [and] like a melodrama. This first record is about this girl who is dealing with things from her past that her family has led her to being involved in and her trying to find a place in the world and break out of it. It’s going to be a big epic centered around her."

The first generation of these women we meet is Ethel Cain, who tells her story through the album "Preacher's Daughter". In 13 songs spanning an hour an fifteen minutes, we see Ethel struggle with abuse, religion, generational trauma, domestic violence, and eventually, death.

In an interview with Billboard, Anhedönia says of the character, "Ethel Cain is kind of my dark, evil twin...She’s not evil, per se, but we have both been through similar situations. If I didn’t choose to heal and forgive and forget, I would be ultimately destroyed, which is what happens to her. She is the mirrored version of what my life would be like if I chose not to get better.”

In the same interview with Billboard, Anhedönia says “It’s a big story...It’s this all-American girl who crumbles under the weight of God and country. The American Dream is unachievable — being a perfect daughter, a perfect Christian, all of these weights that are put onto young American people are impossible. I like to think of this album as a cautionary tale of what would happen if you don’t free yourself from these imaginary chains, in terms of religion, family and expectation.”

At first, Anhedönia was tempted to place the setting in Anywhere, USA, but later changed her mind, placing the beginning of the album in Alabama, which Anhedönia chose because she believes it to be "middle-of-nowhere enough". Alabama is also where the album was finished.

While lyrics and lore are important to understand the story, don't underestimate Anhedönia's ability to use sounds as guides. She says “The world that I am building has been built in tandem with my production skills and my production knowledge, and it all influences each other. So bringing in another producer would completely shift the narrative. This story is being told sonically as well; the rise, the fall, the swells, the reverb, every turn of a knob, of a dial, of a slider, it all affects the story!”

In another interview Hayden states "Every single note influences the emotion of a song in a huge way and changing even just one can completely shift the emotional quality of the song. I also build my songs around the melody; the melody will always come first."

See official pieces of Preacher's Daughter lore here.

A Note Regarding the Genius Annotations:

There has been talk about the user @/onlyskins being a friend of Hayden's, making their annotations reputable. As far as I know, this has not been confirmed by Hayen herself. Because of this, I have not included the information from that user's annotations. I have absolutely nothing against them, and if I hear Hayden has confirmed them to be true, I will update the tracks to reflect the Genius annotations. Until then, I will only be using what Hayden as said in posts, interviews, and in the songs themselves.

To learn more about each song and to see the lyrics, click on the song name below. Track lore is currently a work in progress, thanks for your patience!