“Telephone Line,” Electric Light Orchestra (1976) This is distressing to the Kinks, who are unable to get proper intel on a mysterious woman who always seems to be chatting when they dial in: “Is she big, is she small? / Is she a she at all?” Farcical mayhem might ensue, but we suspect it might be easier if they just ask who she is directly instead of making insulting judgments about her theoretical appearance. Party lines - a telephone connection shared by multiple people or households - were notorious for their lack of privacy. A crew of female vocalists repeatedly sings Pickett’s digits, while he encourages those looking for “huggin’” and “kissin’” to give him a call.
This hope-springs-eternal soul hit feels like a very early, chaste version of a personal ad. “Beechwood 4-5789,” The Marvelettes (1962)Ĭall the romantic instigator of this Marvin Gaye–co-written motown tune the proto-Beyoncé: This bold woman not only drags a shy guy onto the dance floor, she then flirtatiously gives out her phone number and coos, “I’d like to make you mine.” Best of all, she placates his ego by framing it up like it’s his idea: “You can call me up and have a date any old time.” Brilliant!
But the work put in over the phone isn’t getting him anywhere IRL: She orders him to be on time when picking her up for a date, and though he claims to be broke, it’s clear she won’t be paying a cent when they go out. In “Chantilly Lace,” the Big Bopper is chatting on the phone with his gal, obliquely and idly complimenting her ass, her voice, and her face, while peppering their conversation with “baby”s and “honey”s. It’s distressing to realize that men have been using the same lame lines to woo women for decades, just communicating them via varying degrees of effort as technology has enabled. As these 30 songs reveal, although the device itself has changed over the years, the phone’s importance to relationships has stayed remarkably constant - and thus remained a lyrical staple. The phone has helped romance smolder - whether protagonists are whispering sweet nothings over a land line while twirling a rotary phone cord, leaving declarations of love on answering machines, or slyly sexting from an iPhone 6 - but it’s also functioned as a vessel for heartache, in times when messages are ignored or nobody picks up. Neither obsolete technology nor ever-evolving modes of communication has stopped the device from being a central plot point in dozens of hits. This fascination isn’t new, of course: Pop music’s relationship with the telephone is a long and sometimes sordid affair. Both “Hello” and “Hotline Bling” find common ground in romantic duress revolving around the telephone, the former about missed connections with an ex via home phone, and the latter about missed connections with a soon-to-be-ex- something via cell phone. When Adele and Drake duke it out on the Hot 100 next week, it’ll be more than just a clash between streaming versus downloading, or yet another example of Drake’s dreams been crushed by a woman.
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