Here’s another edition of The Titles Are The Same, But The Songs Are Different. The sentence Call Me can be taken at several levels of suggestiveness, as these tracks suggest.
Blondie, #1 pop in 1980. Interestingly, Blondie made other charts with different songs. The Tide Is High went to #3 on the adult contemporary charts, while Rapture went to #33 in the R&B charts in 1981.
Aretha Franklin, #13 pop, #1 RB for two weeks in 1970. Aretha wrote this.
Johnny Mathis, #21 pop in 1958. Mitch Miller produced the song. And if you know who Mitch Miller is, you’re likely of a certain vintage.
Chris Montez, #22 pop, #2 AC in 1966. Weird: I know this song, but not by this artist. The fact that it was written by Tony Hatch was a big hint. Petula Clark recorded it on an EP in 1965, but it failed to chart anywhere except Argentina.
Skyy, #26 pop, #1 RB for two weeks in 1982. Very dancable.
Tweet, #31 pop, #9 RB in 2002. Co-written by Missy Elliott, and produced by Timbaland.
Click, #35 pop in 1997. To my surprise, I had heard this before.
Go West, #54 in 1985. This is SO eighties!
Dennis DeYoung, #54 pop, #5 AC in 1986. Written and produced by the singer. This is ALSO so eighties.
Too Short and Lil’ Kim, #90 pop, #30 RB in 1997. This is the NON-explicit version? Er, ah…This is from the 1997 movie Booty Call starring Jamie Foxx.
Variations
There’s also Call Me (Come Back Home) by Al Green, #10 pop, #2 RB for two weeks, which my Top Pop Singles book lists separately. No, he’s NOT my cousin, though I have made jokes to that effect.
Over a dozen other songs start with the words Call Me in the title. At least two reached the Top 10 in the rock and roll era, Call Me When You’re Sober by Evanescence, #10 in 2006, and the ubiquitous Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, #1 in 2012.
In 1910, Ada Jones and the American Quartet hit #1 with Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon, written by Irving Berlin. Ben Selvin hit #9 with Call Me Darling (Call Me Sweetheart, Call Me Dear) in 1931; the billing notes The Cavaliers, and the vocalist is Orlando Roberson.
The movie
There is a 1988 movie titled Call Me, directed by Sollace Mitchell, and starring Patricia Charbonneau, Stephen McHattie, and Boyd Gaines. Since there are over 900 movies and TV shows with the words Call Me in the title, I had to search for it by plugging in Boyd Gaines, who I vaguely remember from “a three-year (1981-84) stint as Mark Royer, the dental student who married Barbara Cooper (Valerie Bertinelli) on the long-running CBS sitcom ‘One Day at a Time.'”
As for the film, “A journalist agrees to meet an obscene caller at a bar, and ends up witnessing a murder.” The tagline: “He knows everything she never knew about herself. He could be everything she ever wanted . . . or feared!”
The IMDb is 5.3 On Rotten Tomatoes, there are two negative critics’ reviews, and the audience response was only 20% favorable. Still, some people sort of liked it. One viewer, giving it 2.5 stars out of five, acknowledged, “I am not entirely sure it completely makes sense, but it did keep me watching. ” One could rent or buy Call Me on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or Apple TV, not that you should.
I just read today’s New York Times post about favorites. The article is about pizza and food but the author writes about the music we listened to in high school. The article made me think of you and your love for music!!
Thank you for the post…educational and entertaining. Music and humor soothe the soul.
I had never seen the Call Me Maybe video before, and the funny ending ties in with the title.
And, nope, I don’t think Too Short and Lil Kim will be posted on a group board for elementary and high school music teachers. (Weak grin)