**UPDATE 16th June 2025 - The appeal against this video being blocked worldwide at the Archive on Youtube was rejected (shock!). Because of its format it is automatically listed as a "short" and because it's over 2 minutes long, that's an instant copyright issue. Plus, some copyright holders objected to the video having The Phone Book in it, even though it's Tom playing it on the acoustic guitar and is freely available on his social media. Not a commercial recording. The longer I use YouTube, the less it makes any sense. This means that I can't Archive it and make it available in the way I'd like most, but you can always stream it on Tom's TikTok profile. For those of you who wish to avoid that platform, t's available to download here.
Tom is on a roll. Here's another step on the path to coming out of hibernation, as we wait for more news of his impending solo album. This time around we get an acoustic take of The Phone Book, which feels a little bit faster than the original. Less gentle too.
It's been 12 years since The Weight of Your Love album was released, within which this track was originally housed. I don't know exactly when The Phone Book was written, or the muse that inspired it, but it seemed to articulate perfectly the turmoil in Tom's life at that time. Especially the line about jumping through hoops with dissension in the troops. He was still in the process of building a band from scratch after Chris had gone, and stepping back from the ledge above oblivion that he'd been standing on for the better part of 2012 when considering Editors' future. Fitting, then, that we're in another time of big change and The Phone Book is a feature of it.
brought to you with lots of lemming-love ;) x
