Tom Tom Club — Genius Of Love

JUL 01 1981 · 12:00

Tom Tom Club — Genius Of Love (1981) Director: Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton Era: Early MTV Era (1981) - Coinciding with MTV's launch month, this animated video represents the first wave of purpose-built music video art produced for the nascent channel, blending post-punk wit with Caribbean funk sensibility. Exceptional. This video sits at the precise intersection of MTV's inaugural moment, the new wave/funk crossover, hand-crafted animation art, and the nascent music video auteur tradition. Directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton — who would go on to create Max Headroom and direct Hollywood features — the video is a primary source document for early MTV aesthetics, animation technique history, and the cultural politics of genre crossover in 1981. Its pop art DNA (Rizzi), its Caribbean warmth metrics (color temp 2.18, brightness 113.85), and its legacy as a sampling foundation make it indispensable for any archive of the era. Tier 1 artifact. Context: Released in September 1981, 'Genius of Love' arrived just one month after MTV's August 1, 1981 launch, making it one of the earliest purpose-built animated music videos to circulate on the nascent channel. The video's hand-drawn crayon-and-pencil aesthetic — executed by Cucumber Studios using artwork by pop artist James Rizzi — predated the glossy production values that would come to define the mid-1980s MTV era, instead embodying a downtown New York art-world sensibility fused with Caribbean warmth (the track was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas). The song's lyrics paid tribute to Black musical innovators including George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Sly and Robbie, Kurtis Blow, Hamilton Bohannon, and James Brown, establishing Tom Tom Club as a crossover bridge between white new wave and Black funk, soul, and reggae traditions. The song became one of the most sampled tracks of the 1980s, with early hip-hop acts including Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde and Grandmaster Flash interpolating it within months of release. Director notes: The video was produced through Cucumber Studios Ltd. in collaboration with Tom Tom Club. The animation is based on the pop art work of James Rizzi, the artist who also designed the Tom Tom Club debut album cover. According to 909originals.com, directors Morton and Jankel worked from 'thousands of Jimmy's drawings' to construct the hallucinogenic animated short. The duo returned to work with Tom Tom Club again in 1984 for the 'Pleasure of Love' video. The video was noted by Frank Zappa in an MTV interview as his favorite music video at the time, citing its animated and clever quality. The 4K version archived here is an upscaled restoration of the original analog 1981 animated film.