"Call Me" vs. "Call Me Maybe"

wish the poll options included al green and the throwing muses

Cold and clinical?! Call Me is a time-tested powerful incantation imo.

not sure how "cold" is a demerit!

wish the poll options included al green and the throwing muses

or Aretha vs Dennis DeYoung

Call Me is seductive and aggressive and desperate, and Call Me Maybe is kinda cute and, idk, passive? It doesn't do a lot for me. Debbie does it for me.

Call Me Maybe is a truly great pop song for 16 year olds, I dunno what you 30-somes are getting out of it

this is tough... but i think i'm going w/ blondie.

ftr i would definitely choose "call me maybe" over "since u been gone"

This is not a hard choice.

Also, Petula Clark

Wow, Carly Rae Jepsen was born in 1985. I totally thought she was younger than that.

when I hear "Call Me" now it kind of makes me want to put on "Children Of The Grave"

Why not both?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy4Y-ttU1KI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RVxtCbMZGs

(There's 2 other ones on youtube, too, but I'll spare you.)

I am not even sure how "Call Me" vs "Call Me Maybe" is a contest, fwiw. But I am dumb.

Call Me Maybe is a truly great pop song for 16 year olds, I dunno what you 30-somes are getting out of it

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 20, 2012

how does it feel to be 31?

I think it might have to do with them both having the words 'call' and 'me' in their titles.

xpost

That's not what I meant, obviously, but they could have at least have included Spagna.

I could've included a whole laundry list of songs with "Call" and "Me" in their titles, but I really just wanted to make people choose between two and Blondie's seems like the most ubiquitiously famous of the "Call Me"'s.

I have never made the musical connection between "Children Of The Grave" and "Call Me" before this moment. LOL, thanks ILM!

you are a terrible person for making this poll fyi, JF

That's not what I meant

Just a dumb joke...

No love for Ringo's song, eh?

Call Me Irresponsible

how does it feel to be 31?

i'm 26....

Already predicting how dessicated your thirties will be?

it's no "I Want it That Way", can I just say

also lol @ saying that not enjoying having "Call me Maybe" drilled into your head every time you go anywhere or do anything = dessication

I had to listen to them soundcheck "Call me maybe" for five hours last Saturday and I'm feeling pretty dead inside as a result

The only song from exposure to which for five hours I wouldn't feel pretty dead inside is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc5Sm4iRtxs

HOORAY!

sanity restored

btw I would totally vote for the Tay Zonday version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sruQJ12PsI

i only regret that i cannot cast 10 votes for blondie

I would like to vote for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEsPhTbJhuo&feature=related

Call Me Maybe is a truly great pop song for 16 year olds, I dunno what you 30-somes are getting out of it

― frogbs, Wednesday, June 20, 2012 2:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm

Does it stop being truly great when you hit 17, 18 or maybe 22?

I thought Achy Breaky Heart was truly great when I was 4

carly rae jepsen is 26 and i feel that's sort of important, it has this sort of "idealised golden age of teenpop" feel to it, and the kind of tension (borne often from the knowledge of adulthood) between the idealised high school teenage crush that you know is idealised and never happened quite like that vs the realness of capturing those heart-in-mouth private feelings that happened all too well

one of my favourite things about "call me maybe" is how it pretends to be really forward - lusting over his SKIN, "and this is CRAZY" - but it's all an internal monologue and when it comes down to it she's pretty coy. the title line could've easily been "call me baby" which makes a lot more actual grammatical sense, certainly it's less clunky, and you have to think the writers thought of it, but "call me baby" kind of assumes she's got what she wants already and knows it, whereas "call me maybe" draws back at the last minute - in both song and video there's this underlying assumption that he's probably not going to reciprocate (but the feelings and the possibilities are joyous anyway)

tweet's "call me" is better than either, so secretive and sensual and alluring and i love songs about being the Other Woman (although actually he's the Other Man)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT9TVuoLN9k

to the west side
up and down my spine

carly rae jepsen is 26 and i feel that's sort of important, it has this sort of "idealised golden age of teenpop" feel to it, and the kind of tension (borne often from the knowledge of adulthood) between the idealised high school teenage crush that you know is idealised and never happened quite like that vs the realness of capturing those heart-in-mouth private feelings that happened all too well

Love this, lex.

As much as I love Blondie, "Call Me" has always felt too cold & clinical; a marker of how remote they briefly became at the apex of their imperial phase.

I love cold, clinical and remote Blondie! I'm always a little disappointed by "Atomic" (which I guess is their most remote track, and is brilliant despite my disappointment) because it's never quite as icy as I remember it. But "Call Me" is not even in my top 5 Blondie songs - not remote enough for me.

I still probably like it better than CMM but this needs more thought.

"Call me" was the first Blondie single I didn't buy. Probably because it wasn't on a nice 12" single.

Does it stop being truly great when you hit 17, 18 or maybe 22?

It's similar to a pitcher velocity aging curve, but moved 10 years up. So it's in peak form when you're 15, holds steady until 18, then declines every year until you hit about 30, when it's value over a replacement song (say, "All Out of Love" by Air Supply) becomes about zero

I have never made the musical connection between "Children Of The Grave" and "Call Me" before this moment. LOL, thanks ILM!

gotta give xhuxk total credit for that link, even if he got it from somewhere else back in the day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ktP8hmqHs

wish this were slooower

ahh here we go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teHgkrMVpz0

oh and one of these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSxquE6VDiQ

That Fallon/Roots clip made me like Call Me Maybe a lot more but I think it's more to do with Questo playing a kazoo than Carly May Jetson or w/e her name is

Still Blondie

Carly May Jetson

dn of the future!

I do appreciate lex's interpretation up above but I think she's looking into it way too much, as far as I can tell this woman's being marketed to the 14-year old Bieber crowd

the song has pretty broad appeal across age groups, demographically it's more like "Toxic" than a Bieber single

i am a teenpop person but "call me maybe" doesn't really do it for me; it gets stuck in my head sometimes and i think i like it and then i play it and get bored. lex otm about the "maybe" part, though, that is my favorite thing about it.

same here. it's just an OK song imo, not bad but not great.

I disagree respectfully even, frog; I think Lex is a great writere who's made a career out of loving this stuff (and getting others to love it too) and I think he has nailed how the song's appeal works rather masterfully