If you haven’t revisited the song “Oh My Darling Clementine” in your adult life, save it for the middle of a sunny day, when you are emotionally steady because it is devastating.
It’s about a miner who’s only family member is his little girl who leads some ducks to a river every morning. Then, one morning she trips and falls into the water.
While that’s sad in a “careless world” kind of way, it’s followed by the lyrics “Ruby lips above the water blowing bubbles soft and fine/ But alas, I was no swimmer and I lost my Clementine” That mother fucker WAS THERE. His daughter drowned in front of him & he could only watch.
The one person he’s got in the world is this little girl who just loves the hell out of ducks and he has to watch her last breath knowing full-well he could have pulled her out if he wasn’t afraid of the water. Also, those fucking ducks don’t do shit.
The other version of this song with more verses suggests the singer isn’t the miner but a boy who loves her. But that version is way worse. He says his dreams are haunted by her drowned body UNTIL HE KISSES her sister and then forgets about Clementine entirely.
He starts dating her little sister after the father kills himself out if grief. And that’s the end! The cold unflinching “dreadful sorry” is the most emotion we get out of this atrocity. Life was so brutal for these stupid miners. I want to get in a time machine and hug them all.
Anyway, there’s a haunting choir version of this song by the aptly named Sweptaways on Spotify that’s worth listening to where it’s the father who watched her slip beneath the foaming brine. Warning: it’s ruthless.
