Album: Daydream (Columbia)
Songwriters: Mariah Carey, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Dave Hall, Adrian Belew and Steven Stanley
Hit #1: September 30th, 1995 (6 Weeks)
"Genius of Love" is one of those songs that just instantly puts you in a happy place as soon as it hits the speaker. The second those playful introductory squiggles hit your eardrum, a blanket of sunniness invades your being and it's immediately understood that for the next five minutes any sort of negativity will be temporarily shelved.
The song was first heard in the summer of 1981 on the eponymous debut of a side project Talking Heads members (and married couple) Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth had formed while the main band was in hiatus. Originally released in the UK, the album was an import favorite for months with Stateside listeners mainly due to the irresistible frothiness of tunes like "Genius of Love".
A drugged out amalgamation of good times, the song channels puppy love ecstacy and post-slammer celebration ("'What you gonna do when you get out of jail?'/ I'm gonna have some fun") with random shoutouts to the band's musical idols ("No one can sing/ Quite like Smokey/ Smokey Robinson/ Wailin' and shakin' to Bob Marley/ Reggae's expanding with Sly & Robbie") and favorite party activities ("We went insane when we took cocaine").
Matter of fact, the whole thing sounds like all participants were high when recording it: Tina and her sister Laura sing with a droll flatness as they search for their missing lover; the cartoonish dance-funk-reggae beat suddenly veers in a hip hop direction (remember, rap was still considered an underground fad at the time); and some Muppet pops out of nowhere with senselessly kooky chants of "James Brown". All of these strange elements formed an eclectic enough umbrella that it brought all shades of life together to revel in it's dreamy greatness. One of those in participance of the musical festivities was a young Mariah Carey, and when it came time to start work on her urban-leaning fifth LP, Daydream, she used "Genius of Love" as the base for it's lead single.
No stranger to fizzy love songs that sounded like they were penned by a twelve-year-old ("Someday", "Emotions", "Dreamlover"), Mariah took that youthful songwriting style, seasoned it with her love for '80's dance and hip hop and created one of the most definitive cuts of her career in "Fantasy". Though she tries her best to inject some higher-level of English knowledge in her script ("Images of rapture/ Creep into me slowly"), the song captures the power-belting diva at her most brainless, extending "Genius of Love"'s narrative by living out some fairy tale romance playing in her head ("Baby, I'm so into you/ Darling if you only knew/ All the things that flow through my mind").
Taking on more control in her output, Carey further earned cross-genre appeal on the classic remix, which opened a floodgate of a rap influence Carey would stand by for the rest of her career. Who'd of ever thunk that of all the rappers, she would pick the zany Wu Tang Clansmen Ol' Dirty Bastard as her duet choice? Her handlers probably thought she had gone insane, but when that revamp dropped and ODB drunkenly groaned "baby baby come on" and memorably stated that "me and Mariaaaah go back like babies and pacifiyyaaahs" while she prettily sang to the high heavens, it was all over.
Best Moment: Carey and ODB's intertwined vocal duel (the best odd couple pairing ever!!) in the final seconds (4:12)
DL: "Fantasy (Remix)" (YFH)
DL: "Genius of Love" (YFH)
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