“Operator” by Jim Croce

Jim Croce wrote "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)" on his own, and ABC Records released it on August 23, 1972, as the second single from You Don't Mess Around with Jim, his third studio album, following the title track out the door. The whole song is one side of a phone call: a man at a payphone asking the operator for the number of the old flame who moved to Los Angeles with his former best friend.

He wants to prove to both of them that he's over it, then admits to the operator that he isn't; once he has the number, he can't read it through his tears, and he calls the whole thing off and lets the operator keep his coin. It's folk rock at its most conversational, and Cash Box caught a James Taylor streak in the storytelling. It peaked at 17 on the Hot 100 that December, spending twelve weeks on the chart.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.