The B-52's effectively kicked off the golden age of Georgia's rock music, shifting the cultural center from Atlanta�s conservative metropolitan bourgeoisie to the artistic community of the college town of Athens. In this �liberal� enclave, dominant figures included Jeremy Ayers (a disciple of Andy Warhol in the 1960s and a promoter of the gay-decadent scene in the 1970s), under whose protective wing Keith Strickland, Ricky Wilson, and Michael Stipe developed, and James Herbert (photographer and art professor), whose circle included Vic Varney and Stipe himself. The first�s theatrical gestures and the second�s �visual� approach had a huge influence on Varney and Stipe. Varney (in addition to playing with the Method Actors and Tone-Tones) became the manager of a group of young men who baptized themselves the B-52's. Stipe became the singer of R.E.M..
Another major influence on this generation of musicians were the Athens parties. Athens was practically devoid of nightclubs, discos, and private television. The only nightlife consisted of countless increasingly wild parties, particularly those on Barber Street, where Peter Buck and Michael Stipe lived.
The B-52's became professional musicians when they played at a Valentine�s Day party in 1977. For that occasion, they wrote the songs that earned them their first recording contract.

At first, the B-52's were just a �novelty,� a joke for intellectuals, within the broader formal renewal of the New Wave. After all, the typically postmodern approach of the New Wave encouraged eccentric and quirky reinterpretations of consumer music stereotypes. The B-52's targeted 1960s culture in its most bland aspects and disco-music culture in its most flamboyant aspects. From the fusion of these two imaginaries (among the most seductive of the century) emerged a musical style that was simultaneously melodic, rhythmic, arranged, and parodic. Arrangement and parody were perhaps the cornerstones: the former due to the vocal counterpoints of two female singers (shrill, girl-group style) and electronic keyboards (emulating beach-style Farfisas), and the latter due to costumes and poses, which playfully paid homage to mid-century American provincial life (for example, the iconic beehive hairstyles known as B-52's), as well as to lyrics, always surreal and self-referential, peppered with adolescent trivialities. Characteristic of the New Wave was the final makeup, that cold, impersonal touch that transformed kitsch into a philosophical essay. The songs sounded almost robotic, driven by a tight funky rhythm but with no bass lines and, above all, with the bare minimum of enthusiasm.

The group (two girls and three boys) formed within the university environment of Athens. B-52's (Warner Bros, 1979) produced a handful of party classics, starting with Rock Lobster (DB), the android-like (keyboard sequences) and ecstatic (female backing vocals) single that launched them in 1979�a tour de force of vocal inventions ranging from Gregorian chants to soprano trills, without ever losing the piped rhythm of the Farfisa organ. The driving, catchy 6060-842, 52 Girls, and Dance This Mess Away animated their frenzied theater of the absurd. Planet Claire pushed them into a more futuristic realm, with interplanetary noises, a thunderous rhythm, and keyboards evoking sci-fi soundtracks. Lava added a touch of the epic to the hypnotic base. The group moved to New York in April 1979, leaving behind the Athens scene they had helped explode. Wild Planet (Warner Bros, 1980) delivered once again the irresistible voodoobilly of Private Idaho and Devil In My Car, always driven by an irrepressible urge to dance. Strobelight could be a Go-Go�s-style rock and roll. But Quiche Lorraine indulges in their futuristic stereotypes with a tired rhythm, and Party Out Of Bounds simply fails to get people dancing. That said, the sound had reached its peak of sophistication. The group functioned like a complex machine with perfectly aligned gears: Ricky Wilson�s guitar synchronized with Keith Strickland�s drumming, the mantra-like, Hawaiian, and Gregorian harmonies of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson in sync with Fred Schneider�s humorous interjections.

The encounter with the neurotic David Byrne during the EP Mesopotamia (Warner Bros, 1982) had the effect of depressing the group, which suddenly stiffened into a cold, inhuman sound, where the humor of their early work gave way to conceptual ambitions of ethno-electronic funk (Mesopotamia, Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can). After a lukewarm Whammy (Warner Bros, 1983), featuring Whammy Kiss and Trism but dominated by weak ditties like Legal Tender and Song For A Future Generation (unsurprisingly chosen as singles), Wilson�s death (October 1985), who along with Strickland played virtually all the instruments, effectively ended the group�s golden era. Schneider had already recorded his first solo album, Shake Society (WB, 1984). When it finally came out, Bouncing Off The Satellites (Warner Bros, 1986) revealed the group�s creative crisis with pale �60s imitations like Summer Of Love and She Brakes For Rainbows. Just when it seemed time to retire the act, the group miraculously resurrected with Cosmic Thing (Reprise, 1989), an album destined to become their best-seller. It included their catchiest song since Rock Lobster, namely Love Shack, as well as the catchy Roam, a personal showcase for Pierson, and the ballad Deadbeat Club. The trick lay in replacing the charm of the rhythms with the appeal of the vocals (here reduced to a bland stew of �whoops� and cheerleader-like backing vocals).

Coming off the artistic and commercial triumph of Cosmic Thing, but now also without Cindy Wilson, the B-52's (namely Strickland, Pierson, and Schneider) arrived at Good Stuff (Reprise, 1992), which was anything but a cash-in on the previous success. The exuberant, never-ending party atmosphere that had dominated Cosmic Thing gives way to a bitter existential melancholy, casting a dreamlike veil over the brightness of the sound and �Brechtianly� contrasting with the nonsense premise of their music. The ballad Revolution Earth and the Hare Krishna ode Dreamland emerge from this curtailed euphoria. Exceptions are the funkier tracks�the title track (a continuation of Roam in the form of a dialogue between the two singers), the comic skit Hot Pants Explosion, and Tell It Like It I-I-Is�which return to pure fun. Unfortunately, Schneider again attempted a solo career with another dreadful album, Just Fred (Reprise, 1996), despite the involvement of excellent backing bands like Six Finger Satellite and Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet. If the B-52's had always been an unusual ensemble, with the singers (three) outnumbering the instrumentalists (two), the balance was now completely skewed: two singers, Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider, and a single instrumentalist, Keith Strickland (increasingly on guitar).

Pierson, in particular, had by now become a virtuoso of onomatopoeic vocalization. Her influence on female singing grew over time. Pierson invented a style that is essentially that of a backing singer but brought to the forefront as a lead vocalist. Her singing is therefore almost entirely contrapuntal and almost always ironic. Moreover, her register is childish and amateurish�the antithesis of a virtuoso singer�yet she takes liberties that display a harmonic boldness with few equals. Overall, this vocal art of contrasts, contradictions, and alienating gestures invented a �third� path for female vocalism: neither lofty melisma nor confessional singing, but a kind of novelty in counterpoint�unpredictable, imaginative, and eccentric. The B-52's had the great merit of inventing a form of cerebral rock that speculated on the syntax of dance music, using its linguistic signs for semiotic purposes.

Nude On The Moon (Warner Bros, 2002) is a two-disc anthology.

Funplex (2008) was a mediocre reunion album featuring Eyes Wide Open.

Keith Strickland married a man in 1996 and retired early from music. Schneider (also openly gay) formed the Superions, who released the album Destination Christmas (2010). Kate Pierson became a motel owner, married a woman in 2003 and released her first solo album, Guitars and Microphones (2015), at the age of 67. Cynthia Wilson released the EPs Sunrise (2016) and Supernatural (2017), followed by the albums Change (2017) and Realms (2023).