He's on the Phone
| "He's on the Phone" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Saint Etienne | ||||
| from the album Too Young to Die | ||||
| B-side | "Groveley Road", "Is It True", "The Process", "How I Learned to Love the Bomb" | |||
| Released | 6 November 1995 October 29, 1996 |
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| Format | 12", MC, CD | |||
| Recorded | 1995 | |||
| Genre | Handbag house | |||
| Length | 4:09 (Radio Edit) 5:10 (Full Length) |
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| Label |
Heavenly - HVN 50 MCA - 55268 |
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| Writer(s) | Cracknell, Stanley, Wiggs, Daho | |||
| Producer(s) | Steve Rodway, Saint Etienne | |||
| Saint Etienne singles chronology | ||||
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"He's on the Phone" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne in collaboration with French singer-songwriter Étienne Daho. A fast-paced dance track, it is one of Saint Etienne's biggest hits, reaching #11 on the UK Singles Chart. The lyrics tell of an "academia girl" trying to escape from a relationship with a married man: "He's on the phone / And she wants to go home, / Shoes in hand, / Don't make a sound, / It's time to go." At the centre of the track is a spoken-word section by Daho.
The song is a remix by Motiv8 of "Accident", which appeared on the Saint Etienne/Étienne Daho Reserection EP, released a few months previously in June, 1995. "Accident" itself is a rewritten version of Daho's 1984 French-language hit single "Weekend à Rome", with original English lyrics. Daho's spoken-word vocals are from the Reserection opening track, "Reserection".
The single was credited to "Saint Etienne featuring Étienne Daho". Daho also appears in the song's music video and joined the band in their performance of the song on Top of the Pops. Daho would also go on to perform the original "Weekend à Rome" lyrics with the instrumentation from "He's on the Phone" in a performance on the French edition of Star Academy.
Spanish pop singer Princessa covered the song on her 1996 album Calling You.
According to producer Steve Rodway, the band had never intended to use "Accident" as single material, but had given it to him for remixing as it was "the only new track they had" at the time of the release of Too Young to Die. Rodway retained an edited-down portion of Daho's vocals, and otherwise only kept the opening piano riff from the original instrumentation (both at the band's request).
Sound on Sound magazine describes "He's on the Phone" as characteristic of most of Rodway's "trademark" sounds:
A hard disk recorder was used to create backing vocals echoing the original through time stretching and pitch shifting.
In 1999, Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger ranked the single at number 29 in his list of the "Top 100 Singles of the 90s".
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Wikipedia