Telephones, Telegraphs, and Cans of Soup

There are scores of ways to communicate, yet we can't stop singing about the telephone.

Though I have a song with over 100k plays on Spotify, my most well-known song has only 2k. I make this claim because that song, “Obliged to Call”, is the only song that people always want to hear when I play live. Here’s the first verse.

Well, I tried to call you on the telephone
But your machine was filled that day
And I tried to write you a letter, baby
But the postage wouldn’t stay
So I found myself a used telegraph
But I don’t speak Morse code
So all I’ve got it this old Epiphone
To get this message to your abode

I adore this song. But I’ve always wondered why I decided to write about such antiquated forms of communication. I am a child of the internet. This song should have been filled with references to Facebook and AOL instant messenger, not telegraphs and soup-can-telephones (i.e., “So I found myself an old soup can / But I couldn’t find enough string”). What’s odd is that it’s not just me who is still singing about the telephone.

The Eternal Poeticism of the Telephone

A few weeks ago, I was writing a piece for Ted Gioia’s popular newsletter The Honest Broker, which involved me doing a good deal of research on the music of the 1940s. During that time, I came across Glenn Miller’s classic swing tune “Pennsylvania 6-5000”.

“Pennsylvania 6-5000” is a fun song, but the title left me puzzled. What did “6-5000” mean? Was it an address? Was it a nickname? I quickly came to learn that 6-5000 was the phone number for the Hotel Pennsylvania at 401 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. Phone numbers were shorter back then because there were less possible phones to call. This sent me on a search for other hit songs with phone numbers in the title.

• 1962: “Beechwood 4-5789” by The Marvelettes

• 1961: “634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)” by Wilson Pickett

• 1982: “867-5309 (Jenny)” by Tommy Tutone

• 1982: “777-9311” by The Time

• 1987: “853-5937” by Squeeze

• 2017: “1-800-273-8255” by Logic ft. Alessia Cara & Khalid

Despite the fact that the length of the numbers and the underlying technology have evolved, telephones have remained astonishingly present in the minds of songwriters. Looking beyond strings of hyphenated digits, there have been 62 songs to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2022 that have mentioned phones and phone calls in their titles. That dwarfs any other mode of communication that I looked at. Furthermore, the phone remains popular even if we focus on the post-2000 period.

Despite the fact that young people in the 2000s spent much of their time communicating via text message and various internet messengers, songwriters still opted to tell their lovers to call them - even if it were crazy - instead of hit them up on Myspace. Frankly, you were just as likely to see a reference to a letter in a song title as you were the various forms of internet communication.

Why can’t we stop singing about the telephone when most people aren’t calling each other up like they did when Glenn Miller was making teenagers swoon? It’s first worth acknowledging that even though our vocabulary around phones has remained consistent, the iPhone in your pocket is worlds apart from Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. Regardless, I think there is something special about the telephone in its various incarnations.

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Primarily, the telephone has been around for over 100 years. Because of that, songwriters know that the device will likely remain relevant for the foreseeable future, but can also use it to evoke nostalgia. That’s unique. Many forms of internet-based communication end up being fads. Songwriters don’t want to write about something that people will forget in 3 weeks. Letter writing leads to a different issue. On one hand, it can be used to evoke nostalgia, but it will never feel contemporary.

Secondly, I think there is something inherently more poetic about the telephone than other forms of communication because it provides both distance and proximity. There is intimacy when you are talking to someone on the phone. It feels like they are right next to you even if they are hundreds of miles away.

Letter writing evokes the distance of the phone but not the proximity. Many forms of text-based communication on the web are the same. In addition, I think the internet-based forms of communication that are not text based, like video-chatting, provide too much proximity. There is something inherently more poetic about hearing someone’s voice but not being able to see their face.

So, next time you’re about to text your friend, pick up the phone and give them a call. Every now and again, we need some distantly, proximate communication. Even if we aren’t aware of that, songwriters seem to be.

A New One
"Phone Call" by Mereki
2023 - Dreamy Acoustic Pop

Discovered by producer Ariel Rechtshaid in 2014, Mereki uses the telephone not to conjure the image of an ex-lover, as is often the case, but a person who has passed away. Though the lyrics are enough to tug at your heartstrings, it’s Mereki’s angelic vocal that pulls as much poetry out of a phone call as is possible.

All I need is another phone call from you
Don’t need much
Just to hear you breathing
On the other end of the line
I’ll catch you on the otherside

An Old One
"Answering Machine" by The Replacements
1984 - Punk

One of the first things I did when I started my education at Boston College was join WZBC, the university’s radio station. I was exposed to tons of great music there, but no band left more of an impact than The Replacements. I still remember when the upperclassman who ran the station mentioned them to me, and I had to sheepishly tell him that I didn’t know who they were. Without a word, he went into the stacks of CDs and handed me their album Let It Be as if it were a sacred text.

I was shocked. How could you give your album the same name as a Beatles’ album? I didn’t think that was allowed. To quote Replacements’ frontman Paul Westerberg, the name was their “way of saying that nothing is sacred, that the Beatles were just a fine rock n’ roll band.”

Let It Be came to be one of my favorite albums. From the irreverence to the sincerity, few albums have ever shaken me like this one. And there are few songs as shaking as the closer, “Answering Machine.” It’s just Westerberg wailing over an electric guitar asking how you can tell someone you miss them when they won’t even pick up the phone. Short answer: you can’t.

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Want to hear more of my music? Check out my latest EP.