Kids, there used to be these things called payphones. Pay phones would be stationed in various areas by the local phone company and if someone was out and needed to reach someone, because cell phones didn’t exist yet, you could put in your coin and make the call home for a ride, or to see if a friend left their house yet, or whatever you needed at the time. If you didn’t have the phone number, probably because someone stole the phone book they kept inside if they had one at all, you could dial the operator and get the number or get help making the call.
It’s this outdated communication method that Jim Croce was thinking of with when he put out “Operator “That’s Not The Way It Feels”, off his 1972 debut album You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, his second single after the title track. I was listening to this while driving with my dad the other day (as I write this) and I noticed there was a story attached to it. So of course I looked it up.
Per usual in this series, we’ll start with a lyric video, to put focus on the words, as he tells the story from the perspective of a man trying to get a call to the woman who broke up with him for his best friend. As with many songs, this was inspired by an actual event Croce witnessed while in the military and elsewhere. This is not a happy song, but it’s not a dark song.
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