Happy Anniversary: The B-52’s, Cosmic Thing

25 years ago today, the first band that put Athens, GA on the map released the album that would go on to become the most successful effort of their entire career.

The B-52’s spent the last part of the ‘70s and the first half of the ‘80s as one of the coolest, goofiest groups around, forging a solid reputation as a fun-time party band through such singles as “Rock Lobster,” “Private Idaho,” and so on down the line, but with the death of founding member Ricky Wilson in 1985, their future was in serious doubt…although – as Kate Pierson told the Onion A.V. Club in 2011, “Nobody ever said, ‘Never again.’” As such, Pierson, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, and Cindy Wilson eventually regrouped with a very tentative plan to try writing some new material, not really focusing on anything other than seeing if they could even make it work.

“When we started getting together to write, we realized it was healing – incredibly healing – but it also conjured up the presence of Ricky,” said Pierson, in her A.V. Club interview. “And we started—I don’t want to call it nostalgia, because I don’t think we were maudlin or anything, but we started thinking about early times in Athens, like ‘Deadbeat Club,’ and things just started flowing. Keith, of course, had to take over all the guitar-playing and everything, so he went through a major transition. He’d always played guitar with Ricky and could play a lot of instruments, but to have the whole thing on his shoulders? I think it was a challenge, but one that he rose amazingly to and started just writing this amazing music. And when we jammed, things just started flowing out, because we had all this emotion and stuff that was locked inside, and it became this wonderful healing thing. We never intended to make ‘Love Shack’ this major party song. It just came out that way. Cosmic Thing just kind of came flowing out during the jam. We kind of had to put the pieces together, like a puzzle or a collage, but when we did, it just clicked.”

The clicking was doubtlessly helped along nicely by the band’s decision to utilize top-notch producers like Nile Rodgers and Don Was on the project, each adding their own unique musical sensibilities to the mix. If the end result made Cosmic Thing occasionally feel a tad disjointed critics…well, this is certainly one of those cases where the only thing that counts is what the fans think, and given that the album went quadruple platinum and provided the B-52’s with (their first) three top-40 singles – “Love Shack,” “Roam,” and “Deadbeat Club” – and further success on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart with “(Shake That) Cosmic Thing” and “Channel Z,” they ended up with a heck of a lot of happy fans.

.articlePFA { display: none; } @media (min-width: 767px) { .rhino_player_embed { float: left; margin: 0 20px 0 0; width:270px; } .buyArea { width:auto; margin: 0 20px 0 0; } .rhino_player_embed { margin: 0 20px 30px 0; width: 308px; } } @media (max-width: 767px) { .node-type-article .rhino_player_embed iframe { width: 270px !important; } .buyArea { clear:both; width: 100%; margin:0; padding:20px; } .rhino_player_embed { margin: 0 20px 30px 0; width: 308px; } } @media (max-width: 480px) { .node-type-article .amazonBuyButton { width: 265px; margin: 0 14px 10px 0; font-size: .8em !important; } .rhino_player_embed { margin: auto auto; width: auto; } }