Se telefonando

"Se telefonando..."
Single by Mina
from the album Studio Uno 66
LanguageItalian
B-side"No"
ReleasedMay 1966 (1966-05)[1]
GenrePop
Length2:58
LabelRi-Fi
Composer(s)Ennio Morricone
Lyricist(s)
Producer(s)Ennio Morricone
Mina singles chronology
"Una casa in cima al mondo"
(1966)
"Se telefonando..."
(1966)
"Breve amore"
(1966)
Music video
"Se telefonando..." on YouTube

"Se telefonando" (transl. "If, by calling on the telephone") is a song performed by Italian singer Mina, released in May 1966. The music was composed, orchestrated and conducted by Ennio Morricone to Italian lyrics by Ghigo De Chiara and Maurizio Costanzo. The song was written for an episode of the Sunday morning TV programme "Aria condizionata" ("Air conditioning").

It was a standout track of Mina's Studio Uno 66, the fifth-biggest-selling album of the year 1966 in Italy, which sold over a million copies worldwide.[2]

Morricone's sophisticated arrangement of "Se telefonando" combined melodic trumpet lines, Hal Blaine-style drumming, a string set, a '60s Europop female choir, and intensive subsonic-sounding trombones. The main theme of the song thrills around just three notes, taken from the siren of a police car in Marseilles.[3] The Italian hit parade #7 song featured eight transitions of tonality building tension throughout the chorus. In late 1966, Mina recorded an English version of the song for United Artists' release in English-speaking countries.[4]

In the reader's poll conducted by the la Repubblica newspaper to celebrate Mina's 70th anniversary in 2010, 30,000 voters picked the track as the best song ever recorded by Mina.[5]

  1. ^ De Rosa, Alessandro (2019). "A Composer Lent to Cinema". Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 9780190681029.
  2. ^ "Top annuali album". HitParadeItalia.it (in Italian). Retrieved 6 February 2013.
  3. ^ "Se telefonando". HitParadeItalia.it (in Italian). Retrieved 27 June 2007.
  4. ^ "From the Music Capitals of the World". Billboard. Vol. 78, no. 51. 17 December 1966.
  5. ^ Castaldo, Gino (25 March 2010). "E Mamma Mina cestinò i complimenti dei Beatles". La Repubblica (in Italian).