Despite exploring themes of love in her music for years, Ethel Cain says she’s never dated anyone — until now.
While speaking to The Guardian in an interview published Thursday (July 24) — just a couple of weeks ahead of her new album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You — the indie-pop star revealed that she recently began her very first romantic relationship at the age of 27. “Love was always my final frontier,” she told the publication. “I never explored it.”
“I never progressed past the idea of love that I had as a teenager,” she continued, noting that her anxieties surrounding her newfound experiences with romance often made the recording process of Willoughby Tucker difficult — to the point where she would cry every day and beg for the album to feel finished.
“If [2022 album] Preacher’s Daughter was my learning experience of what not to do with trauma and healing, Willoughby Tucker has been my experience of what not to do in love,” Cain added. “The entire Preacher’s trilogy is centered around love. Love lost, love gained, love perverted, love stolen. Love is everything to us. It doesn’t matter what you love or who you love, but that you love something — and that love is what propels you forward every day. For better or worse, I think that is a beautiful thing.”
Dropping Aug. 8, Willoughby Tucker will follow January’s Perverts. Before that came Preacher’s Daughter, which rose to No. 10 on the Billboard 200 this past April after a vinyl reissue — making her the first-ever openly trans artist to reach the chart’s top 10.
The interview comes shortly after Cain released a statement explaining and apologizing for controversial remarks she made many years ago during a period of time she called “shameful.” She also wrote at the time that “transphobic” trolls had resurfaced her past comments as part of a “baseless attempt to assassinate my boyfriend’s character.”
“He will address these claims in his own time on his own terms and I support him wholeheartedly,” she added at the time.
