Damn. Sometimes, I get a little nervous when an artist I deeply love and respect puts out a new song and I have to kinda get in the best position to listen to it and it’s always the same – alone, headphones on, blissed out usually with some incense going. I get so fluttery and nervous because I’m anxious to know how I will physically feel when I hear the new piece. I’m not even fucking around when I say that “Fuck Me Eyes” just hit me. It’s definitely a drive a few km over the speed limit wearing heart shaped glasses smoking a cigarette vibes.
If you’re lurked around here, you’ll know I’m a huge fucking Ethel Cain fan and I’m OG, hanging around like a bad cold since those sordid Carpet Bed days, before the monumental rise to fame that she’s had (and deserves).
I even took some experimental photos for her at her first ever Vancouver, BC, Canada stop in 2022 (fuck, how has it been almost three fucking years). Ever since I first heard Ethel Cain, I’ve felt so intensely like the music spoke right to me. I come from a background of some pretty significant religious trauma, something not unfamiliar to many queer and POC youth. Hearing Ethel Cain, I was like, “yeah, finally someone gets it”.
I was fresh from a traumatic brain injury when I did the photos in 2022 and I even got to meet Hayden (Ethel Cain) and I really could have died happy that day, I’m telling you.
I’ve appreciated all of the work so far (yes, even Perverts) and on July 2, 2025 she released “Fuck Me Eyes”, the second single from her upcoming “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You”, following up the single “Nettles”.
“Fuck Me Eyes” connects the previous lore of Preacher’s Daughter that tells the doomed tale of the character of Ethel Cain, leading up to her murder and ascent to Heaven. “Fuck Me Eyes” is a song from the perspective of high school aged Ethel Cain (and the rest of the town of Shady Grove), sung to a sometime rival for the attention of Willoughby Tucker – Holly. As in her previous work, Ethel is proven to be somewhat of an unreliable narrator, and as a listener, I immediately was wondering about the character of Holly – is she the femme fatale romantic rival? Most likely, no, and Holly is likely simply representative of Ethel’s own insecurity and the rumours that can circulate around girls who are coming of age (something that Hayden herself later confirmed).
I remember so vividly the first rumours that spread about me in high school – I was a fifteen year old virgin who hadn’t even kissed a boy(or girl), and suddenly a rumour went around that I was a.. gasp… A SLUT.
It was utterly baseless, of course. But I was the weird girl who dressed in vintage black dresses in a conservative Canadian small town. I like poetry and painted my nails black and I listened to The Cure and Joy Division. I didn’t fit in, aside from amongst a group of youth-group metalhead weirdos who spent our time smoking stolen cigarettes and drinking endless cups of black coffee at the local Denny’s. But suddenly I was this “bad girls”. Girls would whisper about me, and the boys would too. Grown adults in my community reported back to my parents about my “behaviour” (like what behaviour Janice? The fact that I read Stephen King books on a tie dyed blanket in the front yard and your gross little scrote of a son couldn’t stop pulling his pud about it? fuck off), and I remember feeling so powerless. That’s some cosmic shit, man, the first time you really realize the power of shitty people and their shitty words.
I remember too, how powerful it was to gossip about other girls. Girls fighting in the dirtiest way that our socialization allows us to – tearing each other apart for sport.
Anyways, here’s the lyrics:
She really gets around town in her old Cadillac
In her mom’s jeans that she cut to really show off her ass
She’s got her makeup done, and her high heels on
She’s got her hair up to God, she’s gonna get what she wants
Her nails are heartbreak red ’cause she’s a bad motherfucker
And all the boys wanna love her when she bats her
Fuck me eyes
She goes to church (She goes to church) straight from the clubs
Thеy say she looks just like her momma bеfore the drugs
She just laughs and says, “I know” (I know), “She really taught me well
She’s no good at raising children, but she’s good at raising Hell”
Her daddy keeps her in a box, but it’s no good
The boys can’t get enough of her, and her honey
Fuck me eyes
Nowhere to go, she’s just along for the ride (She’s just along)
She’s scared of nothing but the passenger’s side
Of some old man’s truck in the dark parking lot (Parking lot)
She’s just tryna feel good right now
They all wanna take her out
But no one ever wants to take her home
Three years undefeated as Miss Holiday Inn
Posted outside the liquor store ’cause she’s too young to get in
They ask her why she talks so loud (Talks so loud)
“What ya do with all that mouth?” (All that mouth)
Boy, if you’re not scared of Jesus, fuck around and come find out
She’s got the radio blasting with her big white smile (White smile)
Pretty baby with the miles
And when she leaves, they never see her wiping her fuck me eyes
Nowhere to go, she’s just along for the ride (She’s just along)
She’s scared of nothing but the passenger’s side
Of some old man’s truck in the dark parking lot (Parking lot)
She’s just tryna feel good right now
They wanna take her out
But no one ever wants to take her home
Home, but no one ever wants to
Take her home
Oh, no one ever wants to
Take her home
Take her home
I’ll never blame her, I kinda hate her
I’ll never be that kind of angel
I’ll never be kind enough to me
I’ll never blame her for trying to make it
But I’ll never be the kind of angel
He would see
Nowhere to go, she’s just along for the ride
She’s scared of nothing but the passenger’s side
Of some old man’s truck in the dark parking lot (Parking lot)
She’s just tryna feel good right now (Right now)
She really gets around town
She really gets around town
She really gets around town
“Fuck Me Eyes” is definitely less like the Perverts EP from January 2025 and much more in line with the previous hit song “American Teenager” from 2022’s “Preacher’s Daughter” and I love it, honestly. In between the Swedish hip hop I can’t shut my goddamn mouth about, it’s just “Fuck Me Eyes” over and over again. It’s such a soaring ballad about being a teenage girl, growing up too fast with all the pressures of society, church, one’s parents, one’s school and community and friends. It’s about growing up, and realizing the true despair inherent in becoming an adult. It’s about realizing both the power and inherent lack of power in your own sexuality and feeling chained by it. I remember these feelings well.
It’s so cringe to say, but this song makes me so very emotional, not unlike Ethel’s other work that has reduced me to tears like at Seattle’s Day In Day Out Festival in 2023 where I photographed the show once again for Miss Ethel. Shout out to the other concert goer that day who just held me while I held her and we just cried the whole goddamn way through Sun Bleached Flies. I don’t remember your name, but damn, somedays I’d give anything to live that show over again and just us holding each other, two people connected for just a moment over something so powerful in that burning heat. I luv u – if you read this somehow, please reach out.
Anyways this song is fucking amazing and if you disagree, well that’s fine, it’s fine to have an opinion even if it’s the wrong one. Everyone has a right to be wrong. Get wrecked. Here’s the video:
Ethel Cain is going on tour. Tickets are sold out, so best of luck trying to get them.
VANCOUVER 2025 <3
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