Radium Girls (feat. Katie Martucci) // Rachel Sumner

2021 Grand Prize Winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Competition's Folk Category. Help Rachel's song "Radium Girls" win the John Lennon Songwriting Contest's SONG OF THE YEAR by voting DAILY between APRIL 1st and APRIL 30th at: https://jlsc.com/vote
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"Radium Girls" was written by Rachel Sumner, based on the true, tragic story of the women of the U.S. Radium Corporation and the Radium Dial Company.

Vocal harmonies arranged & performed by Katie Martucci
Upright bass by Michael Siegel
Woodwind arrangements, lead vocals, guitar, flute, & clarinet by Rachel Sumner

~ rachelsumnermusic.com ~
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"Radium Girls"

In the days when Rosie beckoned girls to join assembly lines
A mixture, simply named "Undark" made wristwatch faces' shine
And women with star-spangled hearts sat faithfully in rows
Bent to help the boys entrenched stave off those dark shadows

Day-by-day they all were tasked to paint two hundred dials
With brushes made of camel hair and radium dust in vials
The numbers on the clocks were painted dainty, slim, and slight
So, the girls were taught to use their lips to point the bristles tight

The taste was a little foul, but no one really seemed to mind
The pay was more than three times what a girl back then could find
Radium was championed a new found fount of youth
And the few who knew the dangers kept the public from the truth

For a time, each painter prospered, though the work they did was tough,
And were delighted when they'd clock out covered in the magic stuff
They'd decorate their drabbest dresses, paint skin so they'd sparkle
No earthly sight quite like a glowing angel in the darkness

Curie eleison

Even lights that shine the brightest will eventually dim
But you never do expect it just as someone's life begins
As each timepiece passed through nimble fingers, painters dreamed and planned
But they had, in fact, so very little time left on their hands

Soon these young girls ached as if they'd aged for eighty-years
And radiating pain turned into radiating fear
Doctors did their best to treat an unknown malady
But no remedy could keep those bodies from unraveling

So, aching turned to limping, and sore mouths began to bleed
Then jaws began to break and smiles gave way to crumbling teeth
Families became buried beneath doctor bills and loans
And grief, like radium, began to settle in their bones

Curie eleison

To have so many sick at once seemed no coincidence
But the company - confronted - had maintained its innocence
Yet they'd secretly received results that told a different story
And they knew, despite their lies, that they were liable for the suffering

Those who had enlisted ladies to leave luminescent marks
Were now working overtime to keep them in the dark
Not a single protocol was changed at all, though there was danger
And ailing workers failing fast were easily exchanged for

Healthy, younger women unsuspecting and naive
Who craved to carve their own piece of The Great American Dream
Nothing pierced those stone hearts fortified by corporate greed
Even when the women's own hearts, one-by-one had ceased to beat

Curie eleison

I wish that I could tell you that somebody'd found a cure
Or that when the court case first came round, the crime was answered for
These women walked among the living having one foot in the grave
And still they used what fight that they had left so others could be saved

To this day no one can say how many lives were lost
Had they been sooner taken seriously it might have cut the cost
You may claim women have been long-since elevated in this world -
But how can that be? Our ashes still speak louder than our words...