The Alternative Number Ones: The B-52’s’ “Love Shack”

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.

The B-52's already had their party rock anthem. They might've already had the party rock anthem, and they had it from the very first day that they were a band. When the B-52's played their first show -- an Athens house party on Valentine's Day 1977 -- "Rock Lobster" was already part of their set. In the years that followed, "Rock Lobster," the B-52's' debut single, became one of the definitive bangers of the early new wave moment. John Lennon praised the song just days before his death. The B-52's played the song in Paul Simon's 1980 movie One-Trick Pony and on Saturday Night Live. "Rock Lobster" took the B-52's from regional obscurity to the actual pop charts; it peaked at #56 on the Hot 100. To this day, "Rock Lobster" is the song that the B-52's use to close out their live shows.

I wasn't around to experience it, but in its moment, "Rock Lobster" must've felt like a perfect novelty song. Perfect novelty songs are randomly occurring miracles, and you can't simply recreate them. In a way, the most unlikely thing about the B-52's isn't that they made a song as great as "Rock Lobster" in the first place; it's that they continued to have a career after that song did what it did. Typically, groups as fundamentally silly as the B-52's don't stick around for long, especially when they make a cultural impact early on. But the B-52's endured, and they made another decade's worth of giddy, explosive, ridiculous party rock anthems. None of those songs were as big or as great as "Rock Lobster," and nobody expected any of those songs to be as big or as great as "Rock Lobster." But then the B-52's shocked the world.