The music was composed, orchestrated and conducted by Ennio Morricone to Italian lyrics by Ghigo De Chiara and Maurizio Costanzo.

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.

[2] 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.

During the following decades, the song was covered by several performers in Italy and abroad, most notably by Françoise Hardy (in French "Je changerais d'avis" and in English "I Will Change My Life"), Iva Zanicchi (1966), Orietta Berti (2003), Delta V (2005), Claudio Baglioni, Vanessa and the O's (2007), Neil Hannon (2008), Cheryl Porter [it] (2008) and Etta Scollo (2011).

[11] On November of the same year, Franco Battiato also inserted his own cover of the song in the album Anthology – Le nostre anime.