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 skankin' to Bob Marley
Reggae's expanding with Sly and Robbie

Oops! Your mama said uh
Oops! Your mama said uh
Oops! Your mama said uh
Oops! Your mama

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

"Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon"
"Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon"

Stepping in a rhythm to a Kurtis Blow
Who needs to think when your feet just go?
With a hippie-the-hip and a hippie-the-hop
Who needs to think when your feet just go
"Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon"
Who needs to think when your feet just go
"Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon, Bohannon"
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


Lyrics submitted by milkbone

Genius Of Love Lyrics as written by Christopher Frantz Tina Weymouth

Lyrics © Freibank Musikverlags und vermarktungs GmbH, BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

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Genius of Love song meanings
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21 Comments

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  • +3
    General Comment

    This song always sounds so sad to me.

    incrediblycloseon June 29, 2009   Link
  • +1
    General Comment

    DRUGS! That is all i have to say about that! P.S. This is the song mariah carey samples in "Heartbreaker" and "fantasy" i spent days trying to figure this out.

    tequilaglowormon May 20, 2005   Link
  • +1
    General Comment

    Yeah, but it's also about how great black music used to be, it did...USED to be great...

    zeldafan89on June 07, 2006   Link
  • +1
    General Comment

    This song so rocks!! One of the reasons I love it so much is that it's more than catchy, it's infectious. Once it gets in your brain it will never leave, it will just set up a little home there and always be there to cheer you up. With references to the rough underbelly of a musician's life, the female voices are just so incredibly upbeat and delightful, emitting a giddiness at the level of Japanese high-school girl.

    The stacatto scratching of the name "Bohannan" and the other riffs thrown in make it an homage to the "evolution of funk", as someone briliiantly stated, in the same vein as "Groove is in the Heart" and presumably out of the same musical milieu. I really love the way the normal rhythm of the phrase "gen-i-us of love" is completely distorted, making "genius" trisyllabic followed by the two beats "of love", creating an asymmetrical 3/2 metric as the flow of syllables come to an abrupt stop.

    This refrain reflects the theme of the whole piece, the boyfriend is the genius coming and going, the girlfriend is static, delirious when he's around, lonely when he's not. The boyfriend represents not only this particular musician, but every funk artist, the music itself, drugs, and yes, sex.

    The plaintive "If you see him, please remind him..." at the end pulls the focus back from the artist onto the "lady who waits" herself. It recalls that wonderfully bittersweet song from the musical HAIR "Frank Mills" where the persona bewails the absence of her (one night) lover: "If you see him, tell him...

    What's so deep is not some sort of physical measurement here, which would make no sense in relation to a male, but how deeply funk artistry has been able to penetrate down through the layers of civilization to renew that primitive rhythm of life, sex, and dance.

    How can you not want to move your feet when you hear it?

    GENIUS!!

    The Muscle Animalon September 11, 2007   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Not really sure what this song is about other than a basic love song with an odd music video.

    fatcatx2lon March 22, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    This song is pure genius. Tom Tom Club, as one of the pioneers of hip-hop, espouse their philosophy here. "Funk mutation" is the thesis: take what's out there and help it evolve. The roll call covers the gamut of influences (R&B, funk, soul, reggae, rap, rock), which should be obvious, except perhaps Jim Bohannon, a pop culture radio host who used bumper music. The fact that Mariah Carey sampled it, rappers have covered it, and Jim Bohannon uses the song as the lead-in for his bumper music, shows the cyclic nature of hip-hop.

    Also, it's a love song. Weymouth is singing about Frantz. Considering the influence of the song, he really is a maven of funk mutation.

    ismon June 07, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    I don't remember hearing a sample of this in Heartbreaker?? I only remember it being in Fantasy..

    SinofSinson October 06, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Its about drugs, but how bad they are. All the name dropping of people you want to be, but taking drugs doesnt get you there - only further away. The boyfriend shows all these bad things and has indeed been in jail.

    bob-bagheadon March 01, 2006   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Oops, double post...great song by the way! One of my faves...

    zeldafan89on June 07, 2006   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    does weymouth say "nasty fun"in the stop making sense recording?

    ohpioneeron October 19, 2006   Link

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