TV Telephone
When you’re watching TV and the phone rings and you try to answer it, but the phone ringing is from the TV. Reacting to things that aren’t real. This song is the most autobiographical (about me for me to sing – She was clever like that). I wrote and recorded the instrumental structure in one take at my stepdad’s mountain cabin. Adele wrote the lyrics from the recording. She wrote them to make me lean in on the vocal.
Turntable Graveyard in the basement in 2011
Lyrics
Now
All of it clear as you come to
All of the things that I would do for you
All of the words you never knew to use
They were never true
Until – now
Half of the moon you chewed in two
Halfway again will never carry you
Back to the beauty fading like a bruise
Love you never knew
You left ringing on and on back in the bedroom
Like a TV telephone
Ringing on and on
Going gone
Just now
All of the handprints on the wall
All of the times that you ran down the hall
Thinking it might just be for you this time
This might be the call
But there’s no one
Just a TV telephone
Barefoot like a crazy man
I’d give away my Jayhawks tape
For that double-wide eyed beauty at the bar
Looking for a lifeline
And I’m hoping that you’ll be mine
When you pull me in I know it’s gonna be too far
If you take me
Trembling and bloody, cord wrapped tight around my neck
And turning blue
I’ll cover you like kudzu
Like a locust, strip you bare
Leaving nothing but the bones when I take you