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October 6, 2026 
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What I’ve been listening to lately (and more phone songs)
9 songs, 30 min 30 sec
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| Jim Croce performing in 1973. Disney, via Getty Images |
Dear listeners,
Last time on … The Amplifier (please imagine me doing my most dramatic TV announcer voice there), I shared a playlist of some of my favorite phone songs. Over the past week, plenty of you wrote in to share your own favorite telephonic tunes, or to kindly remind me of some I may have forgotten. I received so much feedback that I’ve decided to include a few of those suggestions at the end of today’s playlist, along with shout-outs to the readers who recommended them. Among the phone songs you’ll hear are the two that I got the most emails about — one from Jim Croce and another from Labi Siffre.
The first half of today’s playlist includes recommendations from some excellent concerts I was lucky enough to catch over the past few weeks (from the Womack Sisters and Willie Nelson), and tracks from a pair of recently released albums I’ve been enjoying. The latest from Greg Freeman, which you’ll read about below, just might be one of my favorites of the year.
And now life hits quicker than doubt,
Lindsay
1. Greg Freeman: “Totaled”
Greg Freeman’s rollicking, richly detailed album “Burnover” was one of my favorites of 2025. Now, just over a year later, he’s back with one that I somehow like even more, and which I think better captures the electric energy of his live shows: an indie-rock epic called “All Set the Bone.” A car totaled by a hit-and-run becomes a kind of metaphor for a failing relationship on this pummeling highlight from the album, which is full of vivid, darkly funny lyricism (“I couldn’t pick my Toyota out of a lineup”) and ends with Freeman pleading in his distinctive croak, “Baby, don’t keep me guessing tonight / as to whether I am dead or alive.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Westside Cowboy: “Kick Stones (The Boys)”
Another new(-ish — it came out in August) album I’ve been digging is “It Goes On,” the debut full-length by the young Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy. I love the sustained, nervy intensity of this opening track, which they absolutely nailed when they played it earlier this year on “Later … With Jools Holland.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. The Womack Sisters: “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)”
I already recommended the Womack Sisters’ wonderfully retro self-titled debut album in a recent Amplifier, but after seeing the trio in concert last week I heartily endorse their live show, too. I caught their great Tuesday night gig at a packed-to-capacity Baby’s All Right, and the audience was audibly bowled over. BG, Zeimani and Kucha Womack — nieces of Bobby and the daughters of Cecil and Linda, the singer-songwriter team of Womack & Womack — sing in tight, sisterly harmony, but BG took the lead on one of the night’s showstoppers, this wrenching ballad that harks back to the golden age of soul. Maybe you thought they didn’t make ’em like this anymore — but the Womack Sisters do.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Womack & Womack: “Teardrops”
Another highlight of the Womack Sisters’ set: They covered one of their parents’ hits! Here’s the original, from 1988, featuring Linda Womack’s silky lead vocal.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Willie Nelson: “Last Leaf”
Two weeks ago I made the trek up to Bridgeport, Conn., to catch a heck of a double bill: Neil Young (playing with his current band, the Chrome Hearts, who just released a new album) and Willie Nelson and Family. I can’t say I’ve seen all that many musicians who are still performing live at 93, so for that reason alone Nelson’s set was something special. But by any measure the performance was a revelation, full of old-fashioned showmanship, well-timed humor and an earned sense of gravitas.
Nelson is one of country music’s ultimate survivors. When Family member Waylon Payne sang a warm cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” I realized that Nelson is the last living member of the Highwaymen, the country supergroup he formed with Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. Onstage, in his bearing, his banter and his choice of songs (which includes a song his son Micah wrote for him that goes, “If I die when I’m high I’ll be halfway to heaven”), Nelson confronts his mortality head on.
The most moving moment of the set, for me, was when he played a gorgeous reinterpretation of this 2011 Tom Waits song, centered around the bittersweet proclamation, “I’m the last leaf on the tree / The autumn took the rest, but it won’t take me.” Waits’s version, from 2011, is defiant and grizzled, recorded when he was 61. The nonagenarian Nelson’s version, though, which he released in 2024, has a placid acceptance and a quiet wisdom about it. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, or listening to it, since I saw that show.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Penguin Cafe Orchestra: “Telephone and Rubber Band”
I confess I wasn’t familiar with this 1981 song by the experimental pop group Penguin Cafe Orchestra, so all credit goes to the Amplifier reader Meserve Platt of San Francisco for recommending it. The bandleader Simon Jeffes created the composition from a tape loop — recorded on his answering machine! — of the U.K. ring tone and busy signal playing in succession. If “Telephone and Rubber Band” sounds familiar, it might be because the alt-rock band Spacehog sampled it at the beginning of “In the Meantime,” a hit in 1996.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers: “Get Off the Phone”
Richard George of Brooklyn wrote in to suggest this sneering cut from Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers’ 1977 classic punk LP “L.A.M.F.,” because it was his outgoing answering machine message for many years. An inspired choice!
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Jim Croce: “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)”
A few of you, including Paul Sturm of Baltimore, pointed out a particularly glaring omission from my list: this melancholy folk tune, from 1972, by the singer-songwriter Jim Croce. Like Chuck Berry in “Memphis, Tennessee,” a heartbroken Croce (or at least his desperate narrator) overshares with a telephone operator in lieu of a conversation with the party he’s trying to reach. Ultimately, Croce’s narrator gives up the ghost: “Operator, well let’s forget about this call / There’s no one there I really wanted to talk to.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Labi Siffre: “Bless the Telephone”
Finally, several readers — including Robert Creech of Charlotte, N.C. — brought to my attention this lovely ballad by the British musician and poet Labi Siffre, which just might be the sweetest song ever written about a telephone conversation. “Strange how a phone call can change your day,” Siffre sings tenderly, “take you away, away from the feeling of being alone.” Amen.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“What I’ve Been Listening to Lately (and More Phone Songs)” track list
Track 1: Greg Freeman, “Totaled”
Track 2: Westside Cowboy, “Kick Stones (The Boys)”
Track 3: Womack & Womack, “Teardrops”
Track 4: The Womack Sisters, “I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)”
Track 5: Willie Nelson, “Last Leaf”
Track 6: Penguin Cafe Orchestra, “Telephone and Rubber Band”
Track 7: Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, “Get Off the Phone”
Track 8: Jim Croce, “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)”
Track 9: Labi Siffre, “Bless the Telephone”
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Have feedback? Ideas for a playlist? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at theamplifier@nytimes.com.
