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Midway through the music video for “American Teenager,” a cheery pop song that has been streamed more than a hundred million times, the camera briefly focuses on two kids sitting in front of a television, watching the Twin Towers fall live. The track itself, which 27-year-old musician Hayden Anhedonia has performed at Coachella and dozens of arenas around the world, harbors a similar darkness; fluttering harmonies and a danceable beat soften the confident critique of American war propaganda. “The neighbor’s brother came home in a box / But he wanted to leave, so maybe it was his fault,” Anhedonia sings. “Another red heart, won by the American dream.” Barack Obama added the song to his annual list of favorite tunes in 2022. But Anhedonia wasn’t aiming to be the country’s next sweetheart. “I don't want to be a celebrity,” she told the Times that year.
Attention found her anyway. During the pandemic, the prairie aesthetic—plaid dresses, pressed wildflowers, fishtail braids—had gained popularity among young people online, a trend whimsically dubbed “cottagecore.” Anhedonia’s advertising work featured tattered American flags, wood paneling, white lace, and church steeples; her Southern Gothic alter ego, Ethel Kane, became the unlikely face of the movement. But unlike some of her followers, who seemed nostalgic for a bygone era, her take on the style was complex—part satire, part nod to her evangelical upbringing.
Anhedönia’s 2022 debut, Preacher’s Daughter, is a thirteen-track concept album about the kidnapping of young Ethel—a rock opera for fans of Flannery O’Connor. The story begins in 1991, after Ethel’s sadistic father dies and she and her boyfriend Willoughby split up. She runs away from home and falls in with an older man who sells her into prostitution, then kills and eats her. The songs, which combine languid, Lana Del Rey-esque Southern femininity with the droning atmosphere of ’90s slowcore, deftly convey Anhedönia’s ideology. The record’s gripping narrative and political consciousness stood out in an era of mediocre radio programming and overly cautious stars. It was a surefire hit.
This week, Anhedönia released Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You, a prequel of sorts to her debut album. She writes, produces, and records nearly all of her own music; the new album features drums, banjo, synthesizer, piano, bass, and at least three different types of guitar. This time, the story centers on the broken heart that sets Ethel on the path to her grisly fate. Willoughby's father, a scarred Vietnam veteran, insults him—on one track, Ethel calls her boyfriend a “natural bloody blond”—and the young lovers dream of escape. But the imagined happy ending is fleeting. Soon, Anhedönia is telling of their doomed future: Willoughby will be sent off to war, and Ethel, of course, will be kidnapped.
Not all of these details are revealed in the lyrics. Much of Anhedonia’s world-building is conveyed through extra-textual material: blog posts, artwork, Q&As, and excerpts from a novel she was working on that her fans painstakingly collected. The fictional universe of these posts also rhymes with the circumstances of Anhedonia’s youth. Her father, like Ethel’s, was a minister; she, too, grew up in a small conservative town, with relatives in the military. Anhedonia’s early exposure to contemporary culture came through the true-crime shows her grandmother loved, which sparked her own interest in the macabre. Much of her artistic training came in church, where she sang in the choir and studied classical piano. Her coming out was met with predictable hostility. At eighteen, she left her parents' home and began composing music, including Gregorian chants and nightmarish electronic compositions created in GarageBand and inspired by the goth clubs where she experimented with drugs.
Since then, Anhedonia has challenged the norms of mainstream pop stardom, both in her music and in her outspoken political views. Following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, she posted an Instagram story with the caption “#KillMoreCEOs”; Fox News condemned the statement as incitement to terrorism. Last February, after Israel killed more than a hundred Palestinians in a series of airstrikes in Rafah, Anhedonia wrote that “the U.S. government
Sourse: newyorker.com
