Everything about the music video for “Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)” screams ’90s country, and a recent tweet reminded me just how hysterically artful this Travis Tritt song is.
Ice cold…
Released in 1991, Tritt beautifully told the story of how to treat an ex-partner when they try to win you back. The music video begins with a full-out-90s Tritt stepping down from his tour bus and walking to his truck.
An presumed “ex” is waiting by his vehicle, and as the masterful camera work captures the mullet-sporting Tritt throw his bag into the truck bed and begin to insert his key into his truck, his former romantic flame says:
“Travis, I want to come back, I miss you.”
A strum of the guitar strings and a Tarantino-film-quality quarter flip into the air then welcomes in the rhythm of the classic song.
The lyrics of the song might be some of the greatest the entire music world has ever seen. Travis Tritt goes scorched Earth and manages to create a passive aggressive work of art.
Take a second and soak in these First Team All-American lyrics:
“You say you were wrong to ever leave me alone
And now you’re sorry, you’re lonesome and scared
And you say you’d be happy if you could just come back home
Well, here’s a quarter, call someone who cares
Call someone who’ll listen, and might give a damn
Maybe one of your sordid affairs
But don’t you come around here handin’ me none of your lies
Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares…”
It is unfortunate that the younger generation has no idea why Tritt is flipping a quarter to his ex in order to “call someone who cares.”
If you happen to be young and are lost by the concept, cell phones used to not exist.
The “portable computer” you are probably using right now to read this used to take up an entire floor of a building. Now it fits easily in your pocket, and its invention caused the “Pay Phone” to go extinct. Therefore, back in the ’90s, Tritt was gifting a quarter so that his former fling could call someone that actually gave a damn about her problems.
Sometimes when I look at my monthly phone bill, I wish we could go back to the times of pay phones.
And the whole “pay phone thing” made me pay really close attention to the full music video. There are so many things that scream ’90s in the video, such as:
– Tritt’s Wolf Harley Davidson shirt in the beginning in the video
– Tritt’s mullet (which is fully back by the way)
– The fact his truck didn’t have remote entry
– His big puffy white shirt he wears on stage (paired with the mullet it almost gives off a Seinfeld vibe)
– The idea of giving someone a quarter so that they can use a pay [hone
– The newspaper Tritt reads in the diner (which also looks retro)
– The TV Tritt watches in the yard sale scene
– Everyone else’s mullet in Tritt’s band
– Every person’s fashion that appears in the video
The music video is almost a time capsule for the ’90s.
Watch it if you want to be transported back to simpler times or have a good laugh at this classic Travis Tritt toe-tapper… one of the best country music “F you” songs of all time.