The B-52’s often get relegated as a “party-pop” outfit, but their subversive legacy runs deeper and stranger than any casual fan would know.
Despite their love of jokes, puns, and non-sequiturs, the legacy of the B-52’s is best stated bluntly: they are arguably the most consequential queer band to have ever existed. While most people know them as a party-pop group famous for jokey and meme-able anthems like “Rock Lobster” and “Love Shack”, the legacy and power of the B-52’s runs much deeper than their beehive wigs would let on. The recent vinyl box set, The Warner and Reprise Years, captures nearly their entire body of work (save for 2008’s Funplex, a strangely aggressive final album released on Astralwerks). For a songbook that is almost five decades old, their power is as striking and succinct as ever.
Formed in Athens, Georgia, it was guitarists Ricky Wilson and Keith Strickland who soon rounded up Ricky’s talented sister Cindy, the spoken-word oddball Fred Schneider, and singer/keyboardist Kate Pierson to form a band that didn’t care much for current trends. This quintet of art pop goofballs had the intention of making each other laugh, hence their penchant for goofy lyrics and thrift store outfits that were deliberately outdated. It would all be a lark were the B-52’s not such sincere fans of everything from James Brown to Yoko Ono, Nino Rota to Captain Beefheart. With already-dated synths and a knack for sonic worldbuilding, it wasn’t long before this group of misfits began honing their craft and would soon change pop music itself in the process.
While the band went through various personal journeys, a vast majority of the B-52’s would eventually come out as queer in some form or another. That sense of otherness dominated their work. What is unique about the B-52’s new wave stylings is that they would park their songs within the realm of camp, which allowed them to be weird and goofy without consequence, even as they snuck in subtle themes that would speak to a whole contingent of queer-aligned listeners.
“Wig”, a goofy toss-off from 1986’s Bouncing Off the Satellites, seems to be little more than a vamp celebrating fake follicles, at least until the first verse when the B-52’s shout out that every member of the group, including the men, are wearing them, a quiet distortion of accepted gender norms. (Yes, the toupee jokes still help it all go down smoothly.) The miniature acts of defiance are scattered throughout their discography, but their best work had an emotional pull lying beneath all the kitsch; however, these songs were rarely the hits.
The reason why the group’s 1979 eponymous debut is considered one of the best albums ever made is for the same reason it shares company with other timeless LPs: its universe is entirely self-contained. From the opening radio signals of “Planet Claire”, the B-52’s start crafting a sci-fi epic that is as surreal as it is timeless. Is that a synth, or is that Kate & Cindy’s vocals cutting through the mix? (It’s both.) Is there a little bit of punk spirit in the dry guitar jangle of “52 Girls”? Absolutely. There’s overt innuendo in “Lava”, a camp classic in “6060-842”, and silly fun with their closing ramshackle cover of the seminal Petula Clark classic “Downtown”. If this were the only album the band released, their legacy would still be secure.
Yet the album’s true brilliance lies in the flashes of emotional clarity that peek out from the off-color layers of camp and shtick. “Dance This Mess Around”, one of the finest rock songs ever crafted, has a stark backing and mid-tempo thump that is alluring, almost dangerous. With a powerful lead vocal by Cindy Wilson, heartbreak is laid bare in its opening verse: “Remember when you held my hand? / Say, remember when you were my man? / Walk, talk in the name of love / Before you break my heart.”
That then lurches into a chorus where she practically screams, “Why won’t you dance with me?!” before undercutting it with a joke: “I’m not no Limburger!” It’s goofy on the surface, but the deliberate layer of cheese masks the tumult underneath. It’s songs like these that show how powerful a songwriting and performance unit the B-52’s had become, capable of rendering catharsis that’s wrapped up in tacky wrapping paper.
While “Rock Lobster” became the generational hit (and so much has been written about it already, it feels almost redundant to point out that there’s lots of trouble and lots of bubble), it wasn’t long before the B-52’s moved quickly to record more. With several concert staples not making the Chris Blackwell sessions for their first record, the group swapped him out for Roxy Music producer Rhett Davies on Wild Planet, their stellar sophomore album, which has its share of staples but wasn’t the hit their debut was.
While “Private Idaho” became the record’s signature song and “Party Out of Bounds” carries on the do-anything attitude of the debut in spectacular fashion, so many of Wild Planet‘s best tracks have gotten lost in the mix. “Give Me Back My Man” is a more upbeat spiritual successor to “Dance This Mess Around”, as our narrator tries to do anything to regain a love who’s moved on, leading to an incredible chorus delivered with genuine conviction: “I’ll give you fish / I’ll give you candy / I’ll give you everything I have in my hand!” It’s surprisingly turbulent, somewhat sanguine, and shows that the band could absolutely capture lightning in a bottle twice.
The B-52’s road-themed songs, like the thumping “Dirty Back Road” and the snappy rocker “Devil in My Car”, carry some propulsion, with Wild Planet only suffering from retreading the ground of their debut a little too closely. It’s a brilliantly executed sequel, but the band’s fans had grown accustomed to knowing what to expect from the group’s sound.
At this point in the group’s story, things take a very odd detour. Designed as a stop-gap between records, Party Mix! is a small remix album that does little outside of extending popular cuts from their first two albums and adding tinny new instrumental bits over them. The vibe remains essentially unchanged, simply blended into a continuous mix. Outside of studio tricks to make guitar sounds circle each side of the speaker, it’s one of the lesser entries in the group’s career, and truly missable for those passing through.
Often, Party Mix! is packaged as a two-in-one with the 1982 EP Mesopotamia, and it makes sense, given that both projects feature compromised versions of the group. While Party Mix! is the definition of a major label cash grab, Mesopotamia was intended to serve as the B-52’s shift in direction, with none other than David Byrne behind the boards. While their sessions were intended to yield a new full-length, creative differences (such as Byrne severely compromising the group’s signature vocal interplay, for which they are known, while shoehorning in worldbeat influences) ultimately led to the sessions being abandoned.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with songs like “Throw That Beat in the Garbage Can” and “Nip It in the Bud”, they feel like the B-52’s-by-numbers, which is as far removed from their party-loving camp intent as possible. Save for the shimmering title track (which is still one of their best), Mesopotamia is as middle-of-the-road an album as the band would ever release. (Interestingly, for The Warner and Reprise Years release, these two six-song EPs are given standalone vinyl releases, an interesting choice that forces each record to be absorbed on their own terms, which benefits Mesopotamia more than anything else.)
Looking to take back some of their own power, 1983’s Whammy! found the Strickland and Ricky Wilson taking over nearly all of the album’s instrumentation and pushing the band’s sound into the realm of keyboards and drum machines. Compared to the high-gloss studio polish that David Byrne coated their songs with on Mesopotamia, Whammy! serves as a counteracting agent, giving their songs a defiantly homemade feel that harkens back to their first two records while not coming off as a retread.
While Whammy! doesn’t have an emotional apex track like “Dance This Mess Around” or “Give Me Back My Man” (although the meaningful tale of learned family behaviors “Queen of Las Vegas” circles in the same resonant stratosphere), this LP nonetheless comes closest to matching their early carefree days, as the goofy little instrumental boogie of “Work That Skirt” and their joyful camp classic “Song for a Future Generation” are full of charm, humor, and enthusiasm. “Legal Tender” and the sci-fi lark “Trism” showcase their willingness to stretch out their silly, and even if the record’s limited musical palette makes it feel less shiny than their career-starting classics, it stands tall as the last great record of their classic lineup.
Tragically, the B-52’s would soon have to reconcile with as deep a tragedy as they would ever have to face: the passing of Ricky Wilson at the age of 32 due to complications from AIDS. In 1985, he was one of the first public figures to be identified as part of the burgeoning crisis, following performer Klaus Nomi two years prior. While the band were deep in the process of recording their new album, his death loomed over the sessions as they were wrapping things up, making the surviving members question if they even wanted to continue. They eventually rallied and finished the sessions for their new LP, too far in to give up now. Strickland permanently stepped away from the drums and hired session musicians to help with percussion.
Bouncing Off the Satellites, released in 1986, has a joyous musicality that belies the circumstances under which it was completed. Any random, casual listener wouldn’t have caught sadness in the B-52’s’ approach, even if some of Schneider’s deadpan vocal deliveries lack the spark of his early days. The group still plays around in cascading waves of synths (check the neglected single “Girl from Ipanema Goes to Greenland” and the closer “She Breaks for Rainbows”), and on occasion, there is a slight edge to their songs, as seen on the environmentally themed “Juicy Jungle” and the aforementioned “Wig”.
There’s some real bite to the melodically boppy riff on domesticity “Housework”, but the real stunner is “Ain’t It a Shame”, a surprisingly morose mid-tempo number about faded love, with some of the most direct and biting lines the group has ever delivered (“I liked your color TV / But you looked at that color TV / More than me”). It’s an emotional cap to a very good album from a band that, at this point, had released multiple masterpieces.
All of this culminates in the strange vessel that is 1989’s Cosmic Thing, the B-52’s big pop comeback that confirmed the group’s party-starting legacy. Yes, “Love Shack” is here, and it’s still being played to this day (shout out to the band for giving a fresh-faced RuPaul a role in the music video). Yet the album’s other singles — the glorious “Roam”, the warped pop confection of “Channel Z”, and the lovely, nostalgic stroll through their early days in the affecting “Deadbeat Club” — are unmistakably the record’s strongest cuts. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to shake your honey buns during the title track, but that edge that existed within those first three full-lengths, which still lingered in a couple of Bouncing numbers, is not as apparent in Cosmic Thing.
This isn’t to take away from the meteoric pop impact of “Love Shack” or the feel-good vibe of “Roam”, but tracks like “Topaz”, which continues the vein of environmentally-conscious lyrics from the last record, are perfectly fine if altogether unexciting, same to the album-closing instrumental “Follow Your Bliss” which follows. Given the massive commercial success of this LP, which sold over five million copies worldwide, many people got to see the B-52’s at their most carefree and people-pleasing. You can’t always control what hits and what is popular, and while Cosmic Thing is by no means vapid, it’s only a rainbow-colored fraction of the depths the band is capable of.
To hear the B-52’s tell it, the supernova success of Cosmic Thing caught them by surprise, and a grueling touring schedule didn’t stop the band’s management from encouraging the group to capitalize on their newfound success. Cindy Wilson took a hiatus, leaving the group as a trio to record Good Stuff quickly with superstar producers like Nile Rodgers and Don Was. The production is immaculate, but it is also a record clearly made under strict timelines.
Yes, “Good Stuff” is as goofy and wonderful a track as you could want from the band, but songs like “Revolution Earth” and “The World’s Green Laughter” rely more on colorful production than they do on sturdy songwriting, hence why all but two of the album’s tracks is over five minutes long. (In the case of “Dreamland”, we cross the seven-minute mark for no melodically discernible reason.)
The Warner and Reprise Years vinyl edition is uncertain about what to do with this record, laying the tracks across three sides of a double-LP set, with the fourth side remaining blank. While the band infamously doesn’t have many B-sides, even for Good Stuff proper, there were a few choice options: the non-album cut “Return to Dreamland” and the potentially licensable cut “Meet the Flintstones”, both surprisingly excellent new tracks from their 1998 best-of compilation, among others. It is a whole vinyl side of missed opportunity to help put some neglected songs back into the spotlight.
The arc of the B-52’s career is remarkable: they started as a boundary-pushing new wave act that openly explored their queer undertones, which, over time, shifted their edge for some camp, ultimately becoming insanely popular in the process. The group remain beloved, and to any casual onlooker, they were true to their quirky kitsch all the way through.
Yet those early records remain something special, full of verve and insight, some pain plastered over with a deliberately ugly shade of neon. The B-52’s are queer elders at this point (the week of this record’s release, they announced a massive joint tour with Devo), and every record contains more than a few highlights. There may be some obvious artistic highs and lows, but The Warner and Reprise Years does more than highlight a group essential to the queer canon: it preserves some of the finest, silliest, and most enduring pop music ever made.