Scam calls are the only thing still ringing Tiffany Sammy’s phone, since nobody actually talks on the phone anymore. “Scam Likely,” named for the warning some carriers stamp on caller ID when a number looks like spam, imagines what would happen if she picked up anyway and the call changed her whole life. Sammy, who records as TIFFY out of Boston, answers that question by pushing her fuzzy bedroom-pop and punk roots toward big, earnest power pop.
She cut the track with her live band in Western Massachusetts alongside engineer and producer Justin Pizzoferrato, whose credits include Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies, and the arrangement grows well past the usual rock setup. Pedal steel slides in around the guitars, and a Chamberlin, an early keyboard that plays back strips of recorded tape, adds a warm, slightly ghostly layer. The guitars keep their grit while everything around them gets plusher, a smart balance for a song about wanting to trust a stranger.
“I didn’t mean to pick up the phone,” she admits up front, and the verses describe the habit like an addiction, a spark through the body that becomes a craving she can’t kick. One line borrows from music notation: a grand pause is the moment an entire ensemble goes silent at once, and Sammy applies the term to the dead air after you answer, when part of you already knows this isn’t the call you’ve been waiting for. She keeps saying hello into it anyway.
The bridge stacks up what-ifs about everything changing in an instant, and that’s where the power pop pays off, with a melody built to make listeners pick up on the first ring. Sammy liked the song’s refrain enough to name her EP I Wanted To Know after it, and “Scam Likely” makes that curiosity feel like the best decision she could make.
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