"Genius of Love" is a 1981 hit song by Tom Tom Club from their 1981 eponymous debut album. It reached number one on the Billboard Disco Top 80 chart. Background "Genius of Love" is Tom Tom Club's second single. Although the album had not been released in North America, over 100,000 copies of the single sold as imports from Island Records UK, at which point Sire Records made a deal to release the single and the album in North America in late 1981. Tina Weymouth sings the lead and also co-wrote the song: although she was responsible for writing the bassline and intended to play it on record, she was forced to pass on the latter task to another musician. As she related in a 1997 interview with Bassplayer.com, "we were given extremely limited studio time – just three days – and when it was time to do that track my whole right arm seized up in a terrible cramp, and I couldn't play. I had never played in the studio around the clock like we were doing, so I didn't even know that could happen. I ended up waking the assistant engineer - he was asleep under the console - and I showed him the part, and he played it. Chris (Frantz) was mad, but I really couldn't play; my hand wouldn't even close. So we did what we had to do. These things happen." The lyrics also pay tribute to many notable black musicians and singers, including George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Kurtis Blow, Hamilton Bohannon, and James Brown. Frantz and Weymouth performed the song as Tom Tom Club in the 1984 Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense, as an interlude to allow Talking Heads frontman David Byrne to change into costume for the film's performance of "Girlfriend is Better". Chart performance "Genius of Love" became a commercial success that performed better than Tom Tom Club's previous singles. Chris Frantz credited the success of the single for convincing David Byrne to "soldier on with Talking Heads". On its release in November 1981, "Genius of Love" became a huge hit in the clubs and on the R&B and dance charts worldwide, soon earning the Tom Tom Club LP a Gold Sales Award in 1982. In the U.S., the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Disco Top 80 chart along with "Wordy