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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

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