r/Ethelcain

so Ive seen Hayden live 3 times now. Her shows are always so amazing. She is my favorite artist of all time. I think she puts on one of the best shows I’ve seen in like 15 years of going to various concerts (obviously I’m a little biased lol) But 9 million…. dude Idk if they all hate each other or simply just don’t care that much about playing live but they have no stage presence!!!
Last time my wife and I saw Hayden in August of 2025 was the first time I saw 9 million as her opener and we were super underwhelmed. We hadn’t heard of them prior to seeing them on the bill so we’d listened to a few songs that day on the drive to the venue and were expecting some shoe gaze-ish type music. They sounded NOTHING like they do on their spotify recordings and what was worse everyone was just standing in a line at the front of the stage looking miserable. It sounded like all their instruments were mixed terribly like everyone was too loud to hear anyone else. Whatever. My wife and I chalked it up to a bad night for them.
Well, my wife and I again just saw her in Nola and 9 million was the opener again. jesus christ. Once again the mixing made it hard to hear anything going on in the music and once again they all were kind of just standing in a line doing nothing. There wasn’t really any stage presence apart from every once in a while one of them would do a couple hops to an upbeat part of the song. They even started packing up all their equipment in the middle of their last song, like several of the members just stopped playing their instruments to pack things into bags? I don’t know it was weird and felt like watching a high school talent show
their drummer seems cool though, he was the only person who my wife and I have consistently thought looked like he wanted to be there and knew what was going on.
has anyone else who’s seen her or just them felt similar?

Pretty common statement here. I made a lighthearted post sharing my boyfriend’s interpretations of Preacher’s Daughter. He’s not an Ethel Cain deep-diver, he doesn’t spend hours dissecting lore, and he obviously wasn’t trying to write a thesis on every song. He listened to an album that means a lot to me and tried to engage with it because he knew it would make me happy. Mind you, listened while driving without the lyrics in front of him. I thought some of his surface level takes were funny and endearing, so I shared them. A lot of you did get that and I appreciated those comments. But some of the responses were so vicious for no reason. Calling him stupid, insulting me for dating him, acting like misunderstanding an album is some kind of moral failure. it was weirdly aggressive over a harmless post.

I know this is Reddit. I know fandom spaces on the internet can get elitist. But it genuinely sucks seeing people treat art like an exclusive club where only the “correct” interpretation is allowed. Especially with an artist like Hayden whose music is emotional, personal, ambiguous, and meant to make people feel something. Not everyone is going to immediately understand every narrative detail or lyrical reference. That doesn’t make them inferior and it definitely doesn’t justify dogpiling them. Some of you have forgotten how to interact with people without trying to embarrass them for entertainment.

The irony is that PD is an album full of loneliness, yearning, shame, humanity, and wanting to be understood and some of you respond to other human beings with absolutely zero grace.

Anyway. I’m shouting into the void but wanted to say my piece before exiting this group. Be kind.

beware of a blond twink (tbh don’t have enough descriptive factors for the others) and his group traveling to every single one of her venues. they get 20-30th in line and then push everyone out of the way to hold spots for their other friends.

some of the ppl in that group also makes “friends” with random people online before concert dates for them to buy their ticket/flight/hotel just to call them names and subsequently ignore them. i heard a sweet boy talking about it in tallahassee. they’re also the same ones who took pictures of hayden’s home and search for her before each show.

future barricaders/campers/attendees in general, watch out for these people. don’t let them or anyone you meet online take advantage of you. it’s disheartening because the fandom of show goers was not like this a year ago, to my knowledge

edit: LOUISE did not take photos of ethel’s house, it was this group, they are trying to pin it on an innocent girl. the group photo is in the comments as well as the scammer is mentioned

I'm still obsessed with the way she says "you know that's for sure" at the end of the first verse of Nettles. Her voice sounds so crisp and satisfying.

That's all

​I was thinking about this and couldn't really find a weakness, so I was wondering what other Little Monsters thought. I just enjoy her theatrical personality so much.

​The only thing I find unfortunate is that she seems typecast in the movies she acts in. These films, including Joker, include music because "hey, we've got Gaga". I don't think that was the case for House of Gucci, and I really enjoyed that movie. Of course A Star Is Born was really good too. If she continues her film career, I would love to see her cast in more complex and challenging roles to see her evolution since the AHS era.

Apparently they have taken photos of Hayden's house in FL. They've been lined up since last night/yesterday. How I know this is because I was friends with one of the girls. When Hayden came to my city that group had already seen her 10 times on that tour. The girl who I made friends with told me her friends weren't willing to let me stand in line with them after i introduced myself, which was fine because I had my own group. when she got me up to the barricade, they all kept pushing me back and being very rude. Mind you I'm 5'0 and not blocking anyone. After hearing how that group treats other fans and how PARASOCIAL this is I'm a little creeped out. Hopefully someone has an idea of who I'm talking about.

Edit: they've queued at every show they've been to staying outside overnight/for days.