Songs with telephone sounds

September 25, 2023 11:26 AM

I am looking for songs with land-line telephone sounds - particularly dial tones or busy signals - used as musical elements.

Examples of what I'm looking for:
- Penguin Cafe Orchestra's Pythagorus On The Line or Telephone and Rubber Band
- Scott Orr's Stay Awake On The Phone (I realize the sounds here might be completely synthesized, or heavily effect-processed samples, but I think this song is exquisite and this one probably inspired this question)
- Macha Loved Bedhead's cover of Cher's Believe
- KonKan's I beg Your Pardon

Less interested in songs where a telephone rings in solo - such as Glenn Miller's PENNSYLVANIA 6-5000 - or otherwise is a plot device such as in a pre-song skit or intermission dialogue - such as at the end of Pink Floyd's Young Lust.
Likewise not too interested in cellphone ringtones.
Not interested (for the purposes of this question) in songs about phone calls, like I Just Called To Say I Love You or Hello.

Don't leave me hanging on the line - leave me a message with all your dial-tone gems!

posted by niicholas to Media & Arts (53 answers total)

Best answer: Telephone Line by ELO comes to mind.
posted by The Bellman at 11:33 AM on September 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

The Spacehog song In The Meantime uses a sample of the same Penguin Cafe Orchestra sound.
posted by chococat at 11:38 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: All the instruments in this phenomenal soul track play the engaged tone. Listen for the one note guitar solo towards the end. The Lollipops—Busy Signal.

And—bonus time—you get the French engaged tone as well. Gillian Hills—Tut Tut Tut Tut.
posted by einekleine at 11:51 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Kraftwerk, Telephone Call

Blondie, Hanging on the Telephone briefly uses a phone ringing at the beginning.
posted by praemunire at 11:51 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Adrian Belew, Phone Call from the Moon
posted by kimdog at 11:55 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Cake - Never There
posted by bluloo at 11:55 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: The Pick - Telco-Jam
posted by Captain_Science at 12:00 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

To Whom It May Concern - Duran Duran
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:08 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Full Disclosure" on Steven Universe
posted by cr_joe at 12:17 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hanging on the Telephone - Blondie


posted by JJZByBffqU at 12:18 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Poe's Haunted has telephone ringing and answering machine beeps interspersed throughout.
posted by TheCavorter at 12:30 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yaz/Yazoo's Bad Connection does this briefly in the middle.
posted by less-of-course at 12:33 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Jam - Girl On The Phone
posted by pdb at 12:34 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Lady Gaga & Beyonce's "Telephone' has a busy signal (can hear it around 4:10 here--NSFW warning because that video has Gaga dancing around a prison, inexplicably in her underwear).
posted by lovableiago at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Blue Aeroplanes - Aeroplane Blues - towards the end.


Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Premonition it's got a busy signal and an operator message at the beginning of the song.

Skatenigs - Horny for Evil dialtone, dialing, and an answering machine message at the beginning of the song.

Soundgarden - Sub Pop Rock City middle of song and very end of song - kind of a silly skit using pulled together answering machine messages to create a fake conversation.

Supersuckers - The Schmooze an answering machine message asking for tickets to a show set to music and '90s toy sound effects.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:45 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Little T and One Track Mike - Shaniqua (Don't Live Here No More)
posted by vunder at 1:00 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

10CC - Don't Hang Up
posted by Rash at 1:41 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Major Lazer - Hold The Line , not just for the ring tone in the verses, but also the fx in the chorus (“vibrate like a Nokia”)
posted by Joeruckus at 1:45 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Frank Zappa - Telephone Conversation
posted by Stoneshop at 1:50 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

There’s a through the phone dialogue and a couple phone related sounds so I’m not sure it meets your requirements, but Primitive Radio Gods’ Standing Outside a Phone Booth with Money in My Hand might qualify.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 1:54 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Hexstatic - Communication Breakdown is almost entirely comms samples - dial tones, dial up modems, phone messages etc!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:01 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Loretta Lynn + Conway Twitty - As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone
posted by skwm at 2:26 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

The original version of Hanging on the Telephone by the Nerves also has it.
posted by theory at 2:54 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Wyclef Jean's 'What's Clef,' a not-very-good footnote in the LL Cool J/Canibus beef, has a beat constructed from the off-hook tone.

(What's that, you say? A noise that was deliberately created to be attention-grabbingly irritating is an odd choice to build your hip-hop track around? Yeah, maybe somebody should've told Wyclef that.)
posted by box at 2:59 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Queens of the Stone Age Long Slow Goodbye uses the landline-exclusive tone when you’ve forgotten to hang up after the call ends (whatever that’s called.)
posted by kapers at 3:09 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Telephone thing by The Fall
Busy Line by Rose Murphy
Telephone Man by Merri Wilson
posted by rongorongo at 3:26 PM on September 25, 2023

Billy Joel's It's Just a Fantasy starts with the sound of a touch-tone phone being dialed. Then you hear the phone ringing.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 4:05 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Related? Queensryche's "Another Rainy Night" has a very common "You have no new messages in your mailbox" voicemail announcement woven into it (2:28 in the video linked above).
posted by hanov3r at 4:59 PM on September 25, 2023

I suspect this doesn't meet your specs so I'll make this brief: first 10 seconds or so of "Another Brick in the Wall - Part 2 by Pink Floyd"
posted by forthright at 5:01 PM on September 25, 2023

Uncle Albert by Paul and Linda McCartney
posted by Rash at 6:51 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Cain't Use My Phone mixtape by Erykah Badu, esp the title track. So good!
posted by Molasses808 at 7:00 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Soil by The Abecedarians
posted by perhapses at 8:08 PM on September 25, 2023

Ring Ring Ring by De La Soul.

Telephone Hour from Bye Bye Birdie
posted by brookeb at 9:27 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

One by Harry Nilsson has that one-note electric piano riff that's specifically based on a busy tone (Magnolia version).
posted by ovvl at 9:45 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hello, this is Joanie... by Paul Evans. Ring tones and disembodied answering machine voice. From 1979.
posted by bwonder2 at 11:43 PM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Get the Balance Right" by Depeche Mode
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 2:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

You need Coldcut's My Telephone in your life.
posted by kuanes at 4:48 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Telephone Call by Kraftwerk has lots of phone sounds.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 5:31 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Kramer - Hello Music

Walter Wanderley - Telefone
(If you're interested in people singing the telephone sounds, there are also versions by Astrud Gilberto and Nara Leão.)

There are few phone sounds sprinkled in on The Pretenders - The Phone Call and De La Soul - Area

Maybe not the telephone sounds you're looking for, but Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Time Zones was made by layering the messages from automated time services from all over the world.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:36 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Stephen's Last Night In Town by Ben Folds Five
posted by emelenjr at 9:37 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Folks, these are all wonderful. I have marked a few that embody what I was looking for as "best" but ALL of these are relevant and helpful and I can't thank you all enough.
posted by niicholas at 9:43 AM on September 26, 2023

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You - Sugarloaf
5705 - City Boy

You might find some additional possibilities in this previous AskMe about songs with phone numbers.
posted by kristi at 4:12 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thirty Incoming by the Books has a bunch of answering machine messages, dial tones and other phone noises.
posted by gamera at 4:23 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Another Crashed Car by Nine Inch Nails uses the tones that sound when a call can't be completed.
posted by omgwtfpmr at 4:50 PM on September 26, 2023

Juliana Hatfield just last week released a cover of the aforementioned “Telephone Line” by ELO… her full ELO cover album is coming shortly.

That cover starts and ends with the off-hook tone and includes the associated AT&T recorded message (“If you’d like to make a call…”)
posted by sesquipedalia at 6:29 PM on September 26, 2023

Sheryl Crow's Am I Getting Through Part 1 And 2 has a "phone off the hook sound" between part 1 and 2 which is so realistic in presentation that back when that was a thing I might hear in real life got me looking for my landline probably twenty times before I learned my lesson.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on September 26, 2023

Telephone Line: Tony Jay and Anton Ellis - includes traditional phone ringing sound with British/Jamaican(?) cadence.
posted by rongorongo at 1:38 AM on September 27, 2023

Soul Coughing's "Janine" is recorded entirely over an answering-machine message (the hiss of it suggests that it's the old tape kind) and answering machine beeps are sprinkled throughout.
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:03 AM on September 27, 2023

Nearly fifty answers in and nobody has mentioned (Drawing) Rings Around The World by the Super Furry Animals? About halfway through this song there begins several samples of the band calling record stores around the world and recording phone noises/answering machines, etc.

Video is NSFW for about 1.5 seconds at a time.
posted by rpophessagr at 11:06 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Tons of land-line sounds throughout Tribe Called Quest's "Skypager."
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There was a hilarious mid-70s soul ballad on AM radio where the singer croons about calling up her man on the phone. It ends with an authentic-sounding tape of her cold-calling her boyfriend at work, he picks up with a deep gruff "Whut?" which softens into a smooth/gruff "Hey Baby" when he recognizes her voice. Okay, now I'm curious.
posted by ovvl at 5:28 PM on September 28, 2023

The Kinks - Party Line
posted by freakazoid at 1:54 PM on September 29, 2023

Pink Floyd’s Young Lust closes with an operator assisted call.
posted by childofTethys at 6:24 AM on October 3, 2023