‘Genius of Love’: Kate Pierson on the “timeless” CBGB masterpiece
Sometimes there’s a song that can just rush you off your backside and on to the dancefloor within an instant. Making a pop song immediately recognisable from the first few notes is a surefire way to grab people’s attention, and having this trick up your sleeve is something that many songwriters strive to make use of.
So many artists have achieved this in pop, rock and beyond, with everyone from Michael Jackson to Nirvana having released songs that manage to captivate the listener from the first second, and it becomes even more effective when an artist opens an album with the song that seizes attentions so rapidly. The B-52s had a number of hits, and many of these such as ‘Rock Lobster’ and ‘Love Shack’ kick off as they mean to go on, enticing their audience in a matter of moments.
Not only do these songs begin with a sense of urgency, but they’re also still classics that have the capacity to make the dancefloor heave several decades after their release. If the band had this art down to a tee, then what was it that inspired them to approach things in such a way that makes the song so instantaneous and also able to withstand the test of time?
Speaking to The Line of Best Fit, the B-52s’ Kate Pierson explained that one of the songs that feels timeless to her and is also hugely representative of their first trips up to New York to play at CBGB as a group is Tom Tom Club’s ‘Genius of Love’. Another example of a song that begins with a sense of bombasticness, the second single from the Talking Heads offshoot band went straight to the top of the US Dance charts in a similar fashion to their debut single, ‘Wordy Rappinghood’.
While it isn’t quite as ubiquitous as some of the aforementioned examples that the B-52s produced, the opening synthesiser line and bass slide from Tina Weymouth are still a bold and gripping way to bring a song into action. Speaking about the song, Pierson says that ‘Genius of Love’ “raises your spirits, and it’s one of those songs that feels timeless,” before comparing it to her own ‘Love Shack’ and Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove Is in the Heart’.
Elaborating on how it was great to see Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz embark on a career away from their main band, Pierson attested that “even though everyone in Talking Heads was revered for what they did individually, I think instrumentalists can almost get shunted away by the power of the singer,” referring to David Byrne being the main focal point of the band when the other members perhaps deserved just as much attention.
Pierson would also reveal that she had been privy to some of the songs that Tom Tom Club had made before they were released, describing hearing the demos as “feeling like part of the process in a way”. In the case of ‘Genius of Love’, she said that “when you hear a demo sometimes it’s almost like the kernel of an idea. But they had their sound, and this song is pretty true to what they initially wrote.”
It’s another example of a song that has stood up against the test of time and still feels incredibly contemporary despite having been released in 1981. It drags Pierson into a good mood every time it comes on, and I know I can say the same for myself as many others can.
