She sings her lyrics through a brief interlude, and later backs the chorus during the rest of the song. The song starts off unassumingly, with Gaga singing in a solemn voice over a harp melody, which changes immediately to a pounding beat. Essentially, Gaga is in a club and her boyfriend keeps calling, but she cannot talk as she was drinking and dancing to her favorite song. The chorus runs as follows: "Stop calling, stop calling, I don't want to talk anymore." "Telephone" consists of an expanded bridge, verse-rap and an epilogue where a voice announces that the telephone line is not reachable at that moment. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in the time signature of common time, with a tempo of 122 beats per minute. Gaga's vocals range from the low-note of F3 to the high-note of C5. It is set in the key of F Dorian mode, and has a basic sequence of Fm–A–B–Fm as its chord progression. The song's lyrics relate to the singer preferring the dance floor to answering someone's call. She further tells her lover that she left her head and her heart on the dance floor. The verses are sung in a rapid-fire way, accompanied by double beats. According to Gaga, the phone addressed in the lyrics of the song is not just a physical phone, but also a person in her head telling her to keep working harder and harder. Gaga explained, "That's my fear—that the phone's ringing and my head's ringing, ... Whether it's a telephone or it's just the thoughts in your head, that's another fear." The song has garnered positive reviews from music critics. Michael Hubbard from MusicOMH said that the song was "probably the best thing here [on "The Fame Monster"]". He also complimented the "brilliant bridge" and the ending of the song where the caller gets through to her voicemail. Popjustice gave the song a positive review: "It's a little bit like Gwen [Stefani]'s "What You Waiting For?" meets Timbaland's "The Way I Are' meets about fifty other things ... The structure's quite exciting ... there is something tumultuously brilliant about Beyoncé's contribution that makes everything seem fine and as if it was the plan all along." Evan Sawdey from PopMatters said that "The much talked-about Beyoncé collaboration 'Telephone', which—with its double-time beat and rapid-fire verses—proves to be one of the most adrenaline-pumped songs that Gaga has yet crafted, the whole thing feeling like it's about to veer of the tracks at any moment simply due to the giddy excitement shared between the two divas, easily turning it into the unquestioned highlight of "The Fame Monster"".