Songs About Phone Calls

Ten songs about picking up, hanging up, or waiting by a phone that is not going to ring.

Entries
10
Category
Music
Updated
  1. A black candlestick telephone on a grand hotel front desk next to a brass bell, a wrecking ball visible through the lobby window.

    10. Pennsylvania 6-5000

    Glenn Miller Orchestra · 1940

    The phone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania, chanted by the band like a cheer. The hotel claimed it was the oldest continuously used number in New York. It closed in 2020 and is being torn down. The number outlived the building. Numbers are like that.

  2. A torn scrap of paper with a phone number tucked into the pocket of ripped jeans hanging on a white picket fence in summer sun.

    09. Call Me Maybe

    Carly Rae Jepsen · 2011

    A Canadian radio hit until Justin Bieber tweeted it was possibly the catchiest song he'd ever heard, and that was that. Nine weeks at No. 1 in the US and the best-selling single in the world in 2012. She just met you, and this is crazy, and it worked.

  3. A cordless phone ringing on a sticky nightclub floor under strobe lights, surrounded by scattered yellow police tape and a diner coffee cup.

    08. Telephone

    Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé · 2009

    Britney Spears passed on it for Circus. Gaga turned it into a duet with Beyoncé about ignoring calls on the dance floor, then shot a nine-minute video. No. 3 in the US, No. 1 in the UK. A song about not picking up that nobody could stop playing.

  4. A phone booth at night with a stack of coins on the shelf and a single wilted flower tucked into the door handle.

    07. Sylvia's Mother

    Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show · 1972

    Shel Silverstein wrote it after calling the mother of an ex who was engaged to someone else. In the song she says Sylvia's busy, and the operator keeps asking for forty cents more. No. 5 in the US, No. 2 in the UK. The phone company was the only winner.

  5. A silver flip phone lying open on a rain-streaked windowsill in a misty countryside house, a cup of tea going cold beside it.

    06. Hello

    Adele · 2015

    The first song to sell a million downloads in a single US week, then ten weeks at No. 1. In the video she uses a flip phone because director Xavier Dolan said filming iPhones felt like shooting a commercial. Hello from the other side of 2007.

  6. A flip phone glowing on the floor of an empty room washed in shifting pastel light, its screen showing a missed call.

    05. Hotline Bling

    Drake · 2015

    Built on a 1972 Timmy Thomas sample, peaked at No. 2, won two Grammys. The video, a man dancing alone inside a softly lit box, became the most parodied clip of 2015. The song's complaint: she stopped calling late at night because she got a life. Brutal.

  7. An old switchboard with tangled patch cords, one plug pulled out and dangling, a child's hair ribbon resting on the desk.

    04. Memphis, Tennessee

    Chuck Berry · 1959

    A man begs a long-distance operator to put him through to Marie in Memphis. Final verse: Marie is six, and her mother has taken her. Berry recorded it at home in St. Louis, and it has been covered more than 200 times. The operator never says a word. Wise.

  8. A glowing jukebox in an empty diner beside a wall-mounted phone with its receiver hanging off the hook, a moon outside the window.

    03. Telephone Line

    Electric Light Orchestra · 1976

    To get the American ring at the top, ELO dialed a number in the States they knew nobody would answer, listened, then tuned a Moog to match it. That is the whole song: a man in England waiting on a line nobody picks up. It went top 10 in the US anyway.

  9. A bathroom stall wall with a single phone number scrawled in marker above a dangling payphone receiver, digits 867-5309.

    02. 867-5309/Jenny

    Tommy Tutone · 1981

    Co-writer Alex Call says there was no Jenny; he made up the name and the number sitting in his backyard. Real people with that number changed it. One junior high fielded up to 200 calls a day. The song peaked at No. 4, which is more than any of those callers got.

  10. A red rotary phone ringing on the hood of a black convertible on a neon-lit Los Angeles street at night.

    01. Call Me

    Blondie · 1980

    Giorgio Moroder handed Debbie Harry an instrumental for American Gigolo and she wrote the words in a few hours, Italian and French included. Six weeks at No. 1 and Billboard's top single of 1980. Stevie Nicks was asked first. She let it go to voicemail.

Honorable mentions

  • A beige wall phone with its coiled cord stretched taut across a hallway toward a closed door, a pair of sunglasses on the floor.

    Hanging on the Telephone

    Blondie · 1978

    A cover of a 1976 song by the Nerves, written by Jack Lee. Producer Mike Chapman added the ring at the top over the band's objections; it is the British double ring, dialed to someone in the UK. No. 5 there, nothing in the US. Blondie gets two phone songs. She earned them.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A telephone repairman's toolbox open on a shag carpet beside a pink princess phone and a coil of wire.

    Telephone Man

    Meri Wilson · 1977

    A novelty hit about the man who came to install her phone, sung entirely in double entendres and squeaks. It sold a million copies and charted the same summer as Telephone Line. Two very different ideas of what a phone call is for.

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