Telephone SongsTelephone Songs

Everybody loves 'em. They're testimony to the enduring power of voice communications--people are still writing new songs about new ways they use telephones. Awhile back, our VoiceCon team made a list, which has since been mislaid. But that's OK, because you're going to give me some more in Comments, aren't you? Only one rule: No Tommy Tutone, because a.) It's too easy; and b.) I can't stand the song. My current favorites after the jump.

Everybody loves 'em. They're testimony to the enduring power of voice communications--people are still writing new songs about new ways they use telephones. Awhile back, our VoiceCon team made a list, which has since been mislaid. But that's OK, because you're going to give me some more in Comments, aren't you? Only one rule: No Tommy Tutone, because a.) It's too easy; and b.) I can't stand the song.

My current favorites after the jump.The one that's been going through my mind the past several days, which prompted me to do this post: Shelby Lynne's paen to drunk dialing:

Bonus points on this one because she looks like she's about to step off stage and do it again right there. One audible NSFW word at the very end. Considering the subject, there should have been more, probably.

Of course the late great Russell Shaw did this blog a couple of years ago, and I link it here not just to take note of his missing voice in the blogosphere, but because he rightly includes Matt's favorite telephone song, the spicy and not entirely safe for work "Telephone Man."

Russell left out No Doubt's "Spiderwebs," another song about unwanted calls. Maybe it's telling that the newer crop of telephone songs tend to be about how to avoid such contacts. Anyway, it's a great song:

My pick for old telephone song is "Satin Doll," which is actually the coolest song in the world, bar none. There's only one line that has anything to do with telephones, but it also says everything about telephones and communications technology. I'm sure that's what Johnny Mercer had in mind:

First of all, rhyming "numbers" with "rhumbas"--you couldn't do it today. And putting telephone numbers in with cigarette holders and such is the best evocation of how cool it could be for someone to be all about talking on the telephone in 1953.

Speaking of telephone numbers, would there have been nearly as many telephone songs if the North American Numbering Plan weren't set up as it was? Do other countries with different numbering plans have as many songs about their telephone numbers? The iambic heptameter when you repeat a series of seven digits over and over in your head because you don't have anything to write with or on? Besides the aforementioned Tommy Tutone atrocity, there's the Wilson Pickett song that Russell cited, "634-5789," which is on the CD my daughter and I used to dance to in the kitchen; and the Glenn Miller song, "Pennsylvania 6-5000," adding the further texture of having the Central Office name in old phone numbers. I still remember that the CO in Peotone, Illinois, the little town where my dad grew up, was "Blackburn," and my grandparents' number started with BL.

That, of course, leads us to the best-named country band, BR-549. I can still hear Junior Samples carefully pronouncing that at the end of his used car salesman bit on "Hee Haw" (no apologies; I was a little kid and, besides, guys like Johnny Cash would just sort of turn up there). I'm going to give you this one, because it's a cover of an old Bob Wills song:

Well, enough indulging my various musical and telephonic obsessions. Add your own if you'd like.