Se telefonando

"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. 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 Marseille. 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. 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.