Tom Tom Club is the side project of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, the drummer and bass player of the Talking Heads. They married in 1977 and released the first Tom Tom Club album in 1981.
The group was a family affair: Tina's sisters Laura and Lani were backup singers, and their brother Loric wrote a song called "Booming And Zooming" for them. When "Genius Of Love" became a hit, they served as the opening act for Talking Heads at some shows (double duty for Frantz and Weymouth), and did an extended version of the song to close their sets.
The nimble beat on this song has been appropriated by many other artists, most successfully by Mariah Carey, who used it on her 1995 #1 hit "Fantasy." It was also sampled by Grandmaster Flash on "It's Nasty/Genius Of Love," and by Ziggy Marley on a remix of "Tomorrow People." Money from earned from the sampling royalties financed future albums from the group.
Free from the cerebral lyrical stylings of David Byrne with their group Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club created songs that focused on the grooves. They make this clear in the line, "Who needs to think when your feet just go?"
In lieu of poetic missives, the lyrics are mostly a mention of various artists that influenced Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, including Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Kurtis Blow, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown.
"Genius Of Love" was a bigger hit than anything the Talking Heads had done to that point. Chris Frantz thinks this may have extended the life of the Talking Heads by convincing David Byrne to keep the group together.
This song was written in the studio, which is how Talking Heads worked on their album Remain in Light. Frantz came up with the title and the last line, and Weymouth wrote the rest of the lyrics and the melody. In our interview with Chris Frantz, he explained how the song came together:
"In the studio I'd play the drum part. It's played by hand, but it's a loop part. It doesn't have any fills or anything, but it does have some tom-toms, so I would record a groove with bass drums, snare, and hi-hat. Then Tina would put down her bass. Then I would add a little tom-tom here and there. And then we added the keyboard part, which was actually two keyboard parts combined. Then Tina worked out the vocals with her two sisters, Laura and Lani, and a little bit of screaming by myself. Then we added Adrian Belew on guitar. We also had a Bahamian guitarist named Monty Brown playing a simple rhythm part. He had recently left T-Connection, a Bahamian funk band that had had a few hits.
Lyrically, things would get changed as it went along, but Tina had a good idea of what she wanted it to be about. We also wanted to pay tribute to all these great soul artists that we really enjoyed and appreciated, like Smokey Robinson, James Brown, and Sly and Robbie. 'There's no beginning and there is no end/time isn't present in the dimension.' I didn't hear that line coming. Tina came up with that. That stuff in the middle, that's Tina's sister, Lani, who invented this language when she was a little kid. It's gibberish, but it sounds like it might be Hindu or something. People at the time were asking, 'What kind of language is that?' Well, it's this language that Tina's sister Lani invented as a child."
Steven Stanley, a Jamaican who was the engineer and co-producer on this track, came up with the famous keyboard line on a Prophet synthesizer when he was alone in the studio one night. "It just came out and it sounded great," he said in Musician magazine. "I have the ability to know when something just fits. That first Tom Tom Club record was done layer by layer, one by one. Drums first, then bass, then the keyboard, then Adrian Belew's guitar, which added a rock element. I came up with that keyboard riff after the drums and bass to the song were already completed."
Writing credits on this song went to group leaders Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth along with Steven Stanley and Adrian Belew. Both Stanley and Belew had worked with Talking Heads and were enlisted for the Tom Tom Club album.
Drawing on disco, rock and the hip-hop sounds then emerging from the South Bronx, this song set the template not just for the group's 1981 self-titled debut, but also for much of the music they've made since. Tina Weymouth looked back at the song in a 2010 interview with Spinner UK: "It just has a texture that sounds like magic," she recalled. "It was kind of a different edge. Everything else was about 120 bpm at the time for dance music, and we wanted to slow it down to give it more internal swing, and not have any four on the floor - maybe give it kind of an island feel as well. I can't remember if it was 112 bpm or something. Maybe it was around 108, but it was really slow for us, because we were used to playing these nervous paces and breakneck speed and stuff, so it was a delightful challenge."
As seen in the concert documentary Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads performed this song on their 1983 tour (switching into Tom Tom Club mode). With Tina Weymouth taking over on lead vocals, David Byrne would leave the stage to change into his famous giant suit.
The group earned the right to record this song (and a full album) after making their first single for Chris Blackwell's Island Records, "Wordy Rappinghood." Blackwell had them record at his Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas with the deal that if the first single went well, they could do a whole album.
Blackwell loved "Wordy," and when he released it in the Latin America and Europe, it did very well, climbing to #7 in the UK. The next song the band recorded was "Genius Of Love," which was their second single. It didn't do as well in Europe as "Wordy," but Island exported 100,000 copies of the 12" single to America which quickly sold out as the song got picked up in dance clubs. This led to an American distribution deal with Sire Records, who issued further copies of the single and released the album in America.
Tom Tom Club released an updated version of this song in 1999 called "Who Feelin' It," which mentions a new list of influences.
This was used in a 2002 commercial for Kia cars. It features young women driving the cars with men who are not exactly "geniuses."
How did David Byrne react to the success of this song? According to Chris Frantz, he basically ignored it. Frantz says that the only time Byrne mentioned the song was when they went to the popular New York dance club Studio 54 after watching the premiere of The Catherine Wheel, which Bryne worked on. When they entered the club, "Genius Of Love" was playing, and the crowd was going nuts. At this point, Byrne made his one and only comment about the song: "How did you get that hand clap sound?"
Movies this song has appeared in include Pie in the Sky (1996), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Towelhead (2007), You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008), Tower Heist (2011), Shame (2011), The Family (2013) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013).
Reg from Blagdon, England, U.kDidn't tom tom club make a commercial for Bird's Custard in England in the 80s?
Sergio Martelli from UsaI always suspected it, but this article confirmed it for me. David Byrne is an a--hole. He lost his spark right after 1977's "More Songs About Buildings and Food", briefly got it back with "Speaking In Tongues" but has sucked pretty much on everything else he's made ever since - syrupy pop s--t. Instead of being happy for his rhythm section being successful on their side project, the scumbag ignores it. Must have stung really bad.
Markantney from BiloxeThough the song was considered a "Club Song"; I think it lasted for so long, because it's also a song you could listen to Late @ Night while going to sleep. I remember more than a few nights going to sleep listening to this song.
But as others have mentioned it's been sampled 10 ways to Sunday but I didn't see any mention(s) of Puffy? I recall him either sampling the beats and/or the lyrics?
Pera from Way Out There, CaFunny to read someone else's transliteration of the "language" after "we went insane when we took cocaine. I wrote it down when I was first learning the song and this is what I came up with:
iscup handra huta hishki icup handra huta hi icup hanti husic handra huta hila kosaba handro uish kindro aya
Interesting how two people can hear the same thing and have it come out so different!
Greg from Glendale, AzRick, definitely not Scandanavian (I'm of Norwegian descent). Vaguely Gaelic, but to me it sounds more Indonesian. I wrote out the lines phonetically the best I could:
iko pa handra hoo kuh-haish kay iko pa handra hoo kuh hay iko pantsee hootsee kandra roo hoota ra hindra ko saba handa ruish kendro wya
I'm surprised no one has tried to translate it. I've seen next to nothing on the 'net.
Rick from Modesto, CaI've always been intrigued by the foreign language in which Weymouth says a sentence or two in the song. Does anyone knwo what language that is? My guesses would be Welsh, Gaelic, or perhaps a Scandinavian language.
Dave from Cardiff, WalesThe Tom Tom Club rock! Mind you, they were the "little sister" band of the great Talking Heads, so no surprises there. Just shows that David Byrne wasn't the only talent in the 'Heads!
Dave from Cardiff, Wales"Stepping to the rhythm of a Kurtis Blow, who needs to think when your feet just go? With a hippity hop, and a hippity ho, who needs to think when your feet just go? Bohannan, Bohannan, Bohannan, Bohannan, who needs to think when your feet just go?"... Loved this song, remember it coming out when I was little even though it didn't do very well in the UK. 2-Pac and Mark Morrisson sampled it commercially as well as Mariah Carey, Ziggy Marley and Grandmaster Flash, although the list of cases where this song has been used as a rhythm sample is massive! The Tom Tom Club did have two bigger UK hits though, with "Wordy Rappinghood" (UK #7 in May 1981) and a cover version of The Drifters' "Under The Boardwalk" (UK #22 in August 1982), and they still enjoy a large cult following in Europe. A corrupted version of "Genius of Love" was also used in a long-running advertising campaign by the Bird's desserts company in the UK for most of the 1980s
Dave from Cardiff, WalesSaw the video of the UK music TV station "VH1 Classic" last Saturday (09 Aug 2008), very weird indeed! An animated sequence based on the cartoon-ish picture (of sorts) that formed the front cover of the Tom Tom Club's first album - 20 years before the Gorillaz were creditted with inventing that concept. Even though it did not do very well in the UK Chart, stalling at #65 in 1981, it got a lot of radio airplay and was a massive club hit in the UK, and remains a cult favourite of sorts. Very catchy tune indeed!
Mayra from Santa Ana, CaThat's right! People do need to start coming up with their own tunes!!
Lydia from Tulsa, OkThe video for this song is indeed very strange...
Wes from Springfield, Va"Mentions various artists that influenced Frantz and Weymouth, including Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Kurtis Blow, Bootsy Collins, and James Brown." Let's not forget Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon - who didn't have much of a career. This song had a very weird video, as I recall.
Kika from Nyc, NyThis song makes me giggle
Tim from Prescott, AzSampled? You mean completely and totally taken. At least she asked permission and paid for using it. I just wish people would come up with their own tunes.
Jo from Newcastle, AustraliaIsn't this the song that Mariah Carey sampled for her 90's tune "Fantasy" ?
