Ranking B-52’s albums

No one, I don’t think, has put The B-52’s and M.H. Abrams in the same sentence, so I will: the unity of disparate elements, essential to art, comes as naturally to this queer Athens act as beehives and Yoko covers. In the unbearably intense “Give Me Back My Man,” Cindy Wilson pleads, “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you CAN-DY” and doesn’t think twice about how weird those two foodstuffs look together. That’s how they rolled. No matter my indifference to “Love Shack,” their 1989 comeback was the most fulfilling, the loudest and wettest fart at other boomer comebacks that year. I suppose those old enough to have experienced punk won’t get what we hear in Cosmic Thing: how drummer Keith Strickland, indifferent to mimicking the dead Ricky Wilson’s tunings, transformed himself into a rhythm lick machine as precise and variable as producer Nile Rodgers.

1. Cosmic Thing (1989)

Maybe you had to be a teen at the height of the Poppy Bush Interzone to appreciate what a delight this explosion of color and Georgia accents was. As I wrote in 2016, the band doesn’t reinvent itself as radically as Wire did in 1986 — conceptually they remained as Day-Glo as ever — but like Roxy Music in 1979 they found inspiration and commercial momentum from a subculture whose exposure was limited to can-you-imagine-this? features in Rolling Stone just a couple of years earlier. “Deadbeat Club” eulogizes good times with dead friends as well as R.E.M. does in “Nightswimming.” Neil Patrick Harris’ Doogie Howser listened to “Channel Z” (on vinyl!) when he was gettin’ nuthin’ but static from his relationship. Besides the buoyancy of Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson’s vocals and Fred Schneider’s effete Muppet routine, Keith Strickland scratches serious grooves on his guitar, an instrument he didn’t play when the late Ricky Wilson was defining the band’s sound a tuning at a time a decade earlier. “Topaz” and the instrumental “Follow Your Bliss” comprise one helluva outro. And I ask you: what is life without “Roam”?

2. The B-52’s (1979)

From the drone of Kate Pierson’s organ on opener “Planet Claire” to the Petula Clark cover, the Athens quintet’s debut wore its retro stylings as proudly as a drag queen did a wig, yet whenever the songs rose up in the mix the tempos were jumpier, the rhythms spikier, and the harmonies dissonant enough to wonder if you’ve been dropped in a moon in the sky (and it’s called the moon). Ricky Wilson’s guitar and Fred Schneider’s interjections remind listeners that this is 1979: no more Elvis and Beatles and Rolling Stones.

3. Wild Planet (1980)

“Private Idaho” rivals “Rock Lobster” as a dance floor jam; “Runnin’ Around,” I hope, scared the shit out of Public Image Ltd. Second albums should be this insouciant. Dolly Parton, will you please cover “Give Me Back My Man”?

4. Party Mix/Mesopotamia (1991)

What a full album with David Byrne, at his zonked workaholic peak, might have sounded like the world will never know. Preferring the aborted Mesopotamia EP affixed to an album of remixed goodies from the band’s first two albums is my way of dancing this mess around, and even the 1990 CD release remixed Mesopotamia. The Soto version, burned in the late 2000s, has “Cake” following “Private Idaho,” “52 Girls” following “Nip It In The Bud.” This is as it should be. James Murphy hadn’t dreamed of dance floor classics with this much scraping rhythm guitar, hysterical vocals, and reveling in camp.

5. Bouncing Off the Satellites (1986)

Their worst-selling album needs no preface other than to note that AIDS claimed Ricky Wilson during its recording; yet Bouncing Off the Satellites embraces the tropes of their Carter-era heyday with the resilience and — no mistaking it — desperation of men and women entering their thirties who don’t believe in God so much as the groove. Bouncing has a few: the Chic-drenched “Girl from Ipanema Goes to Graceland” was a deserved dance floor smash, “Summer of Love” almost its match, and “Ain’t That a Shame,” anticipating Lydia Davis’ short fiction by a decade, is a Cindy Wilson lament about a boyfriend who cares about Space Invaders more than loving her. Sinead O’Connor loved it so much she covered it.

6. Good Stuff (1992)

The title track goes on a bit, and every person involved hoped it would repeat “Love Shack”‘s success — commercially. The ones about UFOs and hot pants treat frivolity as an imperative as constricting as Mass on Sunday. Good Stuff‘s on the list, though, because “Dreamland,” “Vision of a Kiss,” and another rad instrumental called “The World’s Green Laughter” keep it honestly frivolous. Compensating for Cindy’s absence, Kate Pierson sings her ass off.

7. Whammy (1983)

Shrill and thin in their hands, synths did The B-52’s no favors, and you would’ve thought that the combo’s wackiness would’ve served the nascent MTV. Yet Whammy is their first treading water record, on which a palpable listlessness infects the grooves; they program drum machines as indifferently as Stephen Stills might. Leave it to Wilson and his quiverful of surf riffs to animate the likes of “Queen of Las Vegas.” Despite the comity between the singers, “Song for a Future Generation” is defensive rather than affirmative; they saw the end.

8. Funplex (2008)

Steve Osborne almost fucks this one up like he did New Order’s own reunion album in 2001, but “Juliet of the Spirits” and “Ultraviolet” are reminders that people in their late forties have sex, often silly sex.