“Telephone” is the second single off of Lady GaGa’s second studio album, “The Fame Monster“, the song started receiving massive Mainstream airplay in December 2009 and made it to the top of the Billboard Pop Songs chart in late March 2010, giving GaGa her sixth consecutive #1 single in American pop radio. Originally the track was written for popstar Britney Spears, but the pop singer refused the song and GaGa recorded it herself with Beyoncé as featured vocals. Background & Composition
Lady GaGa originally wrote this track for Britney Spears, and the pop princess label refused to use the song, giving it back to Lady GaGa who called Beyoncé for a featured vocals to make the cut off her second album “The Fame Monster” “I wrote it for her a long time ago and she just didn’t use it for her album. It’s fine because I love the song and I get to perform it now.” — GaGa said on an interview. After the refusal, Lady GaGa invited Britney to be the featured vocalist, but the pop singer didn’t accept and Beyoncé recorded instead. Although it’s supposed to be a duet, Beyoncé only sings one small part in the mid of the song and the chorus one-time, the rest of the song she just does backing vocals. The lyrics of “Telephone” relate to the singer preferring the dance floor rather than answer her lover’s call. The verses are sung in a rapid-fire way, accompanied by double beats. According to Gaga, the phone addressed in the lyrics of the song is not a physical phone, but a person in her head telling her to keep working harder and harder. Gaga explained, “That’s my fear—that the phone’s ringing and my head’s ringing, [...] Whether it’s a telephone or it’s just the thoughts in your head, that’s another fear.” Critical Reception
The song received overall positive reception from contemporary music critics. PopJustice said is “a little bit like Gwen’s ‘What You Waiting For?’ meets Timbaland’s ‘The Way I Are’ meets about fifty other things….The structure’s quite exciting [...] there is something tumultuously brilliant about Beyonce’s contribution that makes everything seem fine and as if it was the plan all along.” About.com related the song with GaGa’s “Just Dance”: “An odd track for a lot of reasons. Lyrically, it is a successor to ‘Just Dance’. The lyrics involve Gaga talking about not wanting to use her phone in the club. Having a track like this, when it feels like ‘Just Dance’ was so long ago and a different Gaga, is a little awkward. Especially when it is a planned single…It’s fun and disposable but there are better tracks on The Fame Monster to offer as singles.” Billboard compared it to Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah”, but gave a positive thought: “Much like Kesha’s ‘Blah Blah Blah’, ‘Telephone’ sets out to silence bugaboos, with whom featured artist Beyoncé is all too familiar. [...] By the time “Telephone” surges through a wall of cellular bleeps to return to its simple introduction, Gaga and Beyoncé have left the listener with just one option: surrender to the dancefloor.” Music Video
The music video is over nine minutes long. It begins where “Paparazzi” left off, Gaga was arrested for killing her boyfriend by poisoning his drink. She is taken to a women’s prison, where she is led to her cell by a pair of female prison guards. She is stripped of her shoulder-padded dress and left standing nude, being laughed at by the other prison inmates. One of the guards comments, “I told you she didn’t have a dick”, referring to the intersexual rumors regarding Gaga. For three minutes, the video shows Gaga’s life in the prison—including make-out sessions in the exercise yard, wearing sunglasses made out of half-smoked cigarettes, and catfights in the commissary. Also note, that during the scene in the exercise yard, Gaga’s song, “Paper Gangsta” from her debut album, The Fame is played in the background. Gaga’s sister, Natali Germanotta, makes a cameo in the commissary scene. After that, Gaga gets a phone call, when the song actually starts. As the loud beats of the song is played, Gaga and her inmates do a dance sequence, wearing studded underwear, fishnets and stiletto heels. Gaga is bailed out and goes outside to find Beyoncé waiting for her in the “Pussy Wagon”. Beyoncé is nicknamed Honey Bee, a reference to the character Honey Bunny in Tarantino’s 1994 crime film Pulp Fiction. After an exchange of dialogues, they travel through a desert and pull over at a diner. Beyoncé sits opposite to Gibson, but tires of his stupidity and poisons him. The video then shifts to an intermediate sequence called “Let’s Make a Sandwich”. Gaga stands in a kitchen, wearing a folded-up telephone on her head, while dancers cavort behind her, wielding salad tongs and assorted cutlery. Ultimately, she prepares a sandwich and eats it, after a dance sequence. In the meantime, she mixes poison into all of the dishes she is preparing for the unsuspecting customers causing everybody, including characters played by Semi Precious Weapons and her trademark harlequin Great Dane, to die. Gaga and Beyoncé do another dance sequence, wearing American flag dresses and shredded denims, while strutting around the dead bodies. They then leave on the “Pussy Wagon” and travel on a highway as news reporter (played by Jai Rodriguez) talk about their mass murder. The last shots show Gaga and Beyoncé traveling through a desert with police sirens wailing in the background. The video ends with the line “To Be Continued…”  |
Telephone (feat. Beyoncé)
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