Simple lyrics, simple sentiments, simple moments. The incredible Labi Siffre cuts swiftly to the core of everyday love in 1971’s “Bless the Telephone,” unassumingly perfecting the love song.
Stream: “Bless the Telephone” – Labi Siffre
Love is the catalyst for nearly every other emotion in the human repertoire.
It’s a famously difficult feeling to nail down or describe. Love makes us happy, sad, angry, confused, jealous, excited, afraid… the list goes on and on. It’s often complicated and intricate, difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Chances are you know this already. However, sometimes the best way to experience and understand love is to strip it down and face it in its often painful simplicity. This is exactly what Labi Siffre did in his 1971 song, “Bless the Telephone.”
Claudius Afolabi Siffre – known as Labi Siffre – is a poet, essayist, singer, songwriter, and activist from London, England. Siffre released the majority of his musical work in the early 1970s – including the 1971 album The Singer & The Song, in which “Bless the Telephone” is the thirteenth track – but returned to music to write and release an album titled So Strong in 1987 in reaction to the horrors of Apartheid in South Africa. He penned essays and poetry in the ’90s focused on the unfair treatment and rampant discrimination experienced by Black and queer people. He is an artist and a man who feels deeply. Much of his songwriting is inspired by the powerful and odds-defying love he has experienced in his lifetime.
In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, Siffre shares, “I’ve always taken love very seriously. Not just what it is, but how disastrous it would be without it.” As a gay Black man in the public eye during the late nineteenth century, it is no surprise that his experience of love could be a complicated thing. Through delicate and powerful arrangements in soul, jazz, and soft rock, Siffre reveals the purity and simplicity at the core of love in his life and in ours, exemplified perfectly by “Bless the Telephone.”
The track, clocking in at only a minute and forty seconds, is a tender and simply written love song backed by a guitar playing a beautifully basic chord progression. In the lyrics, he describes the simple pleasures of hearing a loved one’s voice; the feeling of comfort that comes from the knowledge that someone out there loves you.
Using the casual cadence of talking to someone on the phone and straightforward lyrics, Siffre creates beautifully sentimental music that you can feel deep in your gut. He reminds the listener of what love truly is (or, perhaps, what it can be) – consistent mutual support and the little moments in the everyday we often overlook and take for granted.
It is the beauty in banality, a slice of calm amidst the chaos of life. The simplicity is not only portrayed in the lyrics, but in the actions they are describing:
Strange
How a phone call can change your day
Take you away, away
From the feeling of being alone
Bless the telephone
The uncomplicated lyrics make this song accessible and tangible to anyone who may be listening. Because of the lack of personal or specific details, this song could be about anyone in almost any situation. The incredible importance of a phone call, of knowing someone is thinking about you. Siffre whittles life down to its finer points and allows us to see things a bit more clearly. The relentless din of the outside world is muted and for just a moment, there is peace. That is how this song makes the listener feel: for a minute and forty seconds, no matter what else is going on in your life, everything is okay. Labi Siffre lets you breathe freely.
It’s nice to hear your voice again
I’ve waited all day long
Even wrote a song for you
It’s strange, the way you make me feel
With just a word or two
I’d like to do the same for you
Just a couple words from the person you love is enough to change your entire day. This phenomenon is an incredibly wonderful — and, as Siffre says, strange — part of life, and he has captured it elegantly within these lines. He also describes the pain of being separated from a loved one and the feeling of yearning for their presence, an experience that is deeply relatable in familial, platonic and romantic relationships.
The amount of emotion and meaning he packs into under two minutes is nothing short of breathtaking. This song is windshield wipers in a rainstorm, a swim in the ocean on a hot day; It’s a hug from the person you want to hug most. When infused with knowledge of Labi Siffre’s life as a Black and gay man and the discrimination he faced on both fronts, the song becomes all the more profound. Layers of meaning are stacked expertly within the confines of this song.
It’s nice, the way you say my name
Not very fast or slow, just soft and low
The same as when you tell me how you feel
I feel the same way, too
I’m very much in love with you
I’m very much in love with you
Love can overcome (as cliché as it sounds) obstacles of all kinds — distance, hatred, ignorance — all of which were faced by Labi Siffre in spades.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a difficult thing; it’s instead a poignant testament to the strength of love and the strength of Siffre himself. His music shows no trace of bitterness towards the people and things that stood in the way. Instead, it focuses on the people who uplifted him, who gave him hope and peace and safety in simple and perfect ways.
“Bless the Telephone” is sonic love.
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Stream: “Bless the Telephone” – Labi Siffre
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