what is the song for the love of a daughter about
For the Love of a Daughter The song chronicles Lovato's relationship with her estranged birth father, who she rarely saw after her parents divorced when she was two years old.[5] In the song, she pleads with her father to "put the bottle down" and questions him: "How could you push me out of your world, lie to your flesh and your blood, put your hands on the ones that you swore you loved?"[6] Indicative in the lyrics "It's been five years since we've spoken last / And you can't take back what we never had"[7] is distance that has added to the strained relationship with her father. An author from Sputnikmusic interpreted it as a song about her relationship with her alcoholic father who didn't seem to see her as a good enough reason to stop drinking and be there for her when she needed him.[8]
Oh My Darling, Clementine Gerald Brenan attributes the melody to originally being an old Spanish ballad in his book South from Granada. It was made popular by Mexican miners during the California Gold Rush. The melody was best known from Romance del Conde Olinos o NiÃ±o, a sad love story very popular in Spanish-speaking cultures. It was also given various English texts. No particular source is cited to verify that the song he used to hear in the 1920s in a remote Spanish village was not an old text with new music, but Brenan states in his preface that all facts mentioned in the book have been checked reasonably well.[citation needed]