Golden Goof: Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love"

What does it say about the current state of mainstream pop music when a song by a throwaway side project from the 80s is better than anything I've heard on the radio in the last six months? It's hard to put my finger on exactly what makes Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" so - in the words of Robert Palmer - so simply irresistable, but I could put this little number on repeat for days and never play it out. For starters, even though it's barely a song, somehow it works. Like many Talking Heads tracks from around the same period, it sounds like it was written in about five minutes while the band was farting around in the studio, but a different approach really wouldn't have suited it any better. There's simply no substitute for a million dollar riff. In fact, the groove is so monstrous that the lyrics are essentially an afterthought. But if they're filler, they're pretty weird filler. Behold:

What you gonna do when you get out of jail?
I'm gonna have some fun
What do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun

I'm in heaven
With my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend
There's no beginning and there is no end
Time isn't present in that dimension
He'll take my arm
When we're walkin', rolling and rocking
It's one time I'm glad I'm not a man
Feels like I'm dreaming, but I'm not sleeping

I'm in heaven
With the maven of funk mutation
Clinton's musicians such as Bootsy Collins
Raise expectations to a new intention
No one can sing
Quite like Smokey, Smokey Robinson
Wailin' and shakin' to Bob Marley
Reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie

All the weekend
Boyfriend was missing
I surely miss him
The way he'd hold me in his warm arms
We went insane when we took cocaine.

Stepping in a rhythm to a Kurtis Blow
Who needs to think when your feet just go
With a hiditihi and a hipitiho
Who needs to think when your feet just go ...
Who needs to think when your feet just go ...
James Brown, James Brown
James Brown, James Brown

If you see him
Please remind him, unhappy boyfriend
Well he's the genius of love
He's got a greater depth of feeling
Well he's the genius of love
He's so deep.

This is what happens when smart people write a stupid song: you get some kind of freakish stupid/smart hybrid. "The maven of funk mutation"? "It's one time I'm glad I'm not a man"? "Greater depth of feeling"? I love that one. Instead of the usual "He loves me so," it's "He's got a greater depth of feeling." I'm tempted to say that the lyrics manage to achieve the ironic, cut-and-paste, slightly role-playing quality of David Byrne's best, except that I don't think Tina and Chris were actually going for that at all. My hunch is that they just wanted to give a bunch of random shout-outs to all their favorite black musicians and stick some pseudo-Byrne cliche-twisting in between. In the end, there's no cohesion between any of the verses whatsoever, but hey, cohesion is kind of overrated these days.

Then there's the delivery, which AMG memorably describes as "dreamy, sighing, yet curiously flat and emotionless." You get the impression they weren't even aware the mic was on. And yet, and yet...it's perfect. All these elements that could have been so bad in another song just seem so right in this one. Like how it opens in the middle of the riff. Or how they stretch out "Smokey Robinson" to fit the beat, so it comes out "Smo-key-rob-IN son." You couldn't write a song this endearingly goofy if you tried.

Frantz and Weymouth must have been as shocked as anybody when the song became a hit. In fact, it actually peaked much higher on the r&b charts (#2) than on the pop charts (#31)! I'd say that's no small feat for a white married couple. They must have felt pretty proud that the song was so eagerly embraced by the r&b community. Hell, that riff has become as much of a sampling cornerstone as Chic's "Good Times" or James Brown's "Funky Drummer."

The lesson? You can do anything once you put your synthesizer to it.