The Alternative Number Ones: The B-52’s’ “Channel Z”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for subscribers only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

What happened to the larger-than-life funny weirdos? The party-animal types who seemed to spring fully-formed from the bins of thrift shops in far-off galaxies? We used to have so many of those goofballs. In the '80s, we had Pee-Wee Herman, Cyndi Lauper, Morris Day, John Waters' leap into mainstream Hollywood films, the "Day-O" scene from Beetlejuice -- a whole wacky zeitgeist full of zebra stripes and Valentino mustaches. On top of all that, we had the B-52's, the deeply idiosyncratic band who made some of the most purely joyous rock 'n' roll that the world has ever seen. Most of the people who I just mentioned are still alive and active, but none of them have the cultural weight that they had near the end of the '80s. Bring those freaks back. We need them.

In 1989, the B-52's had every reason to pack up their hairspray and rayon and go home. The band had been patron saints of the '70s-into-'80s new wave explosion, but that moment was over. In 1985, guitarist Ricky Wilson, the group's musical genius, died of AIDS at the age of 32. Most of Wilson's bandmates didn't even know he was sick. Considering that the group included Ricky Wilson's best friend and his little sister, the surviving B-52's were understandably shocked and heartbroken. 1986's Bouncing Off The Satellites, the album that the band released just after Wilson's passing, was their first total commercial failure. The group took years to regroup, and if they'd called it quits, the world would've understood.