♫ Before I talk, I should read a POLL! ♪ ILM Artist Poll #93 ♪ B-52’s ♫

DJP's enthusiasm for "Topaz" a decade ago taught me to love it.

Strickland's slink guitar sounds marvelous.

holy shiiiit at love shack this low. i'm not sure there is *any* band that has sixteen songs better than "love shack," so poll is anyone's game i guess. the song is a fucking masterpiece if you didn't notice. there's a reason it's never gone away, it's so joyous and dynamic and the interplay between fred and kate-n-cindy is maybe some of the best ever. it's like they're riffing on the squarest of old "there's a little place down the way" kinda songs - like, say, "sugar shack" and just leaning right into it with all their might. they don't try to sex it up or imply shady business at the love shack (tho it ends up being kinda sexy anyway, in the way that happy people are sexy), and then at the same time it is an incredibly, unashamedly, untearfully gay song about gay communal spaces, in 1989...

and so many fun parts to sing along to!!! the different ways of delivering "it's as big as a whale"... the james-browny "bang bang" breakdown and build-up, and of course, "TIIIIIIIIIIIIN ROOOF!" it will still be getting the love it deserves on wedding dance floors in fifty years.

xp "Song for Future Generations" is the opposite of the way I like the Bs to sound. The lyrics and delivery are too twee and self-consciously camp, the music too soft and pretty. They're at their best when they're straight-faced and urgent.

Dr. C. OTM hearing James Brown in "Love Shack," it's a better song that the ones that have placed above it so far

didn't get the chance yesterday to join in the "quiche" love but man that's a delightful song. love how fred doesn't turn moody and vindictive until the very end, finally catching up to the sinister, pylon-y, post-punk energy of the music. the gauzy, earnest backing vocals are also beamed in from another genre and yet it just seems obvious and natural that they should be there. and this is the story of a guy and his poodle and how having a good time on a crummy day is their game. half a million people bought this album. i love it.

https://i.imgur.com/QJdXbJJ.jpg
12. Strobe Light

406 points, 18 votes. 1 first place vote.

Wild Planet
fan video (well done though)

live 1980

live 1990

woooooooo

lol that fan video is well don!

i didn't vote for "strobe light" but it's great. i don't think i've ever been in any dance party context where it was playing, that would probably bump it up a lot as it seems like it'd be a blast.

yessss

Too low

I didn't realise this was so popular. I always think of it as one of the lesser songs on Wild Planet.

That fanmade video is really great!

love how their queer sensibility fucks with the Bo Diddley rhythm of "Strobe Light."

https://i.imgur.com/qUauay5.jpg
11. Legal Tender

432 points, 18 votes. Highest position on ballot: 2

Whammy!
music video

live in Rio, 1985 (with Tina Weymouth and her dull husband)

lol Karl

Exhibit A in my Whammy! is underrated thesis.
My #4.

this song is so great, sort of an angular Devo thing, mixed with Kate Bush's "There Goes a Tenner"... so joyful

I heard this for the first time because of the poll. It's beautiful.

Ten!
Twenty!
THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS!

would have been better with Keith instead of a drum machine

Wow, I thought for sure Top 10.

you weren't far off!

here comes my #1

i don't love the whammy! sound but it's at least unique and on this song it just about works. it does feel kinda like a demo though, this basic synth backing track and the guitar feeling eerily pasted on top of it. it's sort of their "temporary secretary" in that i think most casual fans have never heard of it and would be baffled by a poll where it places this high... but it appeals to things a lot of us ilm types find fantastic in records. wiki tells me it was a top-ten dance chart hit, which surprised me. i wish they'd done a b-side "rock version" just to see how it worked....

also reminds me of stuff my friends and i were trying to do with very rudimentary recording skills and software drum machines in the early 2000s. we were trying to cover "deceptacon" and such so i guess there's a reasonable line of descent. i wish "legal tender" went a few more places along the way but the hooks are so simple and appealing, and i'm charmed by cindy's lyrical conceit here, where launching a counterfeiting operation is expressed almost the way you'd explain that you've been setting up a darkroom, or taking up canning of course. but of course, it's always a communal project. we're in the base-meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeent....

https://i.imgur.com/mcucLLn.jpg
10. Party Out Of Bounds

463 points, 19 votes. 3 first place votes.

Wild Planet
live 1980, but not the same 1980 show as a lot of other links in this countdown. Fred approaches Andy McCluskey levels of lateral dancing coverage, at times

according to B-52's legend, they first decided to play together after enjoying a Zombie drink together

WHO'S TO BLAME!?

i love the whole idea behind 'Party Out of Bounds', as well as the execution. when you play it out of nowhere, it really does sound like the B-52's are crashing your party and making it a million times more fun (which makes it a great opener, too)

"ok, who ordered pizza?"

and this is my "too low!" of the countdown, too. i expected it to be top 3 for sure

oh, ALSO: cindy ripping into a machine-gun bongo pattern
<3

xp I heard the formative drink was one of these

https://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/tMw2KftMIbgsgujVcpUwIw/348s.jpg

this one has basically been stuck in my head since Bee OK picked it for the voting-thread title. their nerviest, jumpy-footed-est rock song. love the back and forth between fred and kate - "crashers getting bombed!" "who's to blame?"

another great update of an old concept. about half of fred's lyrics seem like they could come straight from some now-public-domain educational film about throwing a fun and wholesome party, but his delivery, cindy's bongos, and the keith-and-ricky attack turn up the dial and something much more dangerous and exciting seems to be sneaking in the back door. something is going out of bounds and it's great. "people get sick - they play the wrong games" is one of fred's very best lyrics imho. then stuff like "It shouldn't be difficult! Try not to condemn!" seems like it came in from a straight ahead sloganeering punk record. what a creation.

xp

oh shit, that's right! flaming volcano!

a good night at a tiki bar involves a flaming volcano, then a zombie, then maybe a test pilot to top things off. THEN you go crash someone's party and order pizza imo

BE TACTFUL
WHEN MAKING THE ROUNDS

The B-52's are the only ones qualified to give party advice in song form.

This has got to be Planet Claire or Dance This Mess Around #1. I hope it's the latter.

On ILX, :Roam" might be #1.

* "Roam"

there are about five songs left on my ballot where i'd be 100% unsurprised, and satisfied, if they made #1.

they have a lot of legit contenders for #1, both in the ILX and non-ILX context.

I tried to make the email address Party Out of Bounds but was already taken on gmail.

Astonished this wasn't Top 3

They have nine songs that are better?

"Roam" as #1 = disgusting things you'd never anticipate

"roam" rules

https://i.imgur.com/W9Bjq3t.jpg
9. Deadbeat Club

501 points, 21 votes. 2 first place votes.

Cosmic Thing
music video (with michael stipe cameo)

live 1990

Well this is a surprise

TOO LOW

many famous faces of Chronic Town in that video

I get kind of emotional thinking about them coming back to make that album.

i was one of the #1 voters. there are other b-52's songs that rock much harder or that make me giggle but this one puts tears in my eyes, i think it's so beautiful. one of the best musical evocations of real bittersweetness, genuine smiles in looking back through incredible loss and pain, to a time that can never be had again but which still lifts the spirit and matters. a love letter of gratitude to one's bandmates, a statement of just how much it could matter, at the right time, to have a few other proud deadbeats to bum around with.