Recently, I showed my wife a video of Rick Beato talking about the song, “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” by Jim Croce.
Beato, whose name is pronounced bee-AH-toh, is a musician, songwriter, audio engineer, and record producer who has millions of followers on YouTube. One of the things he does is discuss what makes particular songs great. And I thought my wife would like the one about Operator.
On the video, Beato is joined by Mary Spender, a British songwriter/singer who also has a huge YouTube following.
Beato, who is 61, starts the video by explaining some images from the lyric that might be lost on younger listeners. He holds up a dime and says, “This is a dime.” Then he goes on to explain such things as pay phones, phone operators, matchbooks, why a phone number might be written on a matchbook, how one of the jobs of a phone operator was to look up phone numbers, and so on.
Beato then plays a recording of Operator a few lines at a time, stopping it so he and Spender can discuss what was happening lyric-wise and musically.
As I was showing my wife the video, my 10-year-old granddaughter was in the living room drawing. And as with most children, she can pay attention without seeming to pay attention.
Anyway, a number of times, Spender, who is 32, put her hand on her heart and sighed at the power and excellence of the song’s lyric. Croce starts out asking the operator to help him place a call because the phone number written on a matchbook is old and faded. The first hand-on-heart moment came early, with this line, “She’s living in LA with my best old x-friend, Ray.”
Spender says three things: “The heartbreak in that—immediately.”
“It’s so concise.”
“You immediately know there’s history and pain . . . . and that’s in the first verse.”
She also points out that the lyric is a one-sided conversation. The operator doesn’t talk, or at least we don’t hear the operator’s side of it, only the caller’s.
Beato adds, “There is so much information in this verse.”
Then, Beato starts talking about the music. “This song is so weird to play because there are so many chords.”
If you are not a guitar player, then you might not know that in most songs, chords change by the line, usually not by the word or phrase. In this song, chords change often. But it is done so well, you don’t even notice until you try to play it.
Beato and Spender worked their way through the whole song, discussing its depth and complexities. In places, Spender sings along with Croce’s recording, which is a lovely bonus.
At the end, I looked at my wife to see her reaction. However, it was my granddaughter who spoke.
“Now I know,” she said, looking up from her drawing, “what that song is all about.”
If you want to know what famous songs are all about, I recommend Rick Beato’s YouTube channel.
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