From the album Carpet Bed EP
This is a song about nostalgia for a dynamic the speaker cannot name clearly, where missing someone and fearing them occupy the same sentence without contradiction. The speaker frames stalking as devotion, apologizes for 'going crazy' while the song itself is the evidence that nothing has stopped, and most crucially, misses being acted on while blacked out without registering what that admission contains. Anhedönia built Ethel Cain as the person who doesn't leave, who absorbs the damage, and this song is that character in its purest form: longing for something the lyrics refuse to describe.
I miss what you'd do to me / When I was in need of you and blacked out
The speaker never names what happened. The whole song pivots on this absence. 'What you'd do to me' stays blank, and the blacking out means the speaker might not fully know either. The nostalgia is for something they cannot fully access or say aloud.
I'm sorry I went crazy / I just thought I'd let you know
The apology frames the obsessive behavior as past tense, as if it ended. But the song itself is the crazy: drunk outside the old house, taking pictures while they sleep. The speaker is apologizing for something while actively doing it.
I'm bleeding from my ears / Sneaking out while you're asleep 'cause you're my biggest fear
The bleeding appears with zero explanation, dropped between leftovers and sneaking out like it needs none. I'm not sure if it's literal, metaphorical, or a detail from whatever 'what you'd do to me' actually was. The song doesn't clarify. It just moves on.
But you found a way to keep me here / With a body to hold
Verse 2 reveals the speaker sneaks out because they're afraid. So who kept whom? The speaker claims to have been held in place, but they're the one outside the house drunk at night. The song puts both claims on the page and doesn't resolve them.
The song never answers what actually happened between these two people, and that gap is the point. The speaker is nostalgic for something they describe in the passive voice, something done to them while they were blacked out, and the song treats that as simply longing. Ethel Cain built a character who cannot leave and cannot name what she's staying for. This is what that looks like from the inside.
"Misuse Oh" by Ethel Cain depicts someone reframing unconsciousness as intimacy, remembering blacking out while needing someone as a romantic moment rather than recognizing her vulnerability and inability to consent. In Scalpel's line-by-line reading, the song shows her apologizing for "going crazy" without explanation, as if the apology itself has become so rehearsed that it no longer requires understanding what she's apologizing for.
"Misuse Oh" by Ethel Cain explores blacking out as bonding, apologizing without knowing why, fear that doesn't trigger departure, and nostalgia for vulnerability misread as love. The central thread is blacking out as bonding: She describes unconsciousness during moments of need as intimacy, missing what happened to her body when she couldn't participate or remember it. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
"Misuse Oh" by Ethel Cain was released on September 13, 2019 on the album "Carpet Bed EP". Scalpel's analysis covers the full lyrics of the 2019 release.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "Misuse Oh" by Ethel Cain lands here: She still doesn't understand that missing someone who scared you isn't the same as missing someone who loved you safely. The song ends where it started, drunk in the road in front of his house, convinced that what happened when she blacked out was intimacy instead of something she should have been protected from.