It was released on September 29, 2019, her twenty-fifth birthday, through Capitol Records as the first promotional single from her third studio album, Manic (2020).

[1] Written by Halsey, Jasper Sheff and Johnathan Carter Cunnigham, "Clementine" is a "stripped-back track, driven by simple piano tinkling and some subtle clunking for percussion".

[2] Whitney Shoemaker from Alternative Press wrote that "Halsey strips things down in her raw new track".

[3] Mike Nied of Idolator wrote that the track "finds her at her most poetic over sparse keys", while writing that the song "doesn't exactly scream radio hit".

The video shows Halsey and her brother Sévian performing interpretive dance in an aquarium.