The Alternative Number Ones: The B-52’s’ “Good Stuff”

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 members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Were you aware that there are some people who don't like the B-52's song "Good Stuff"? I know! Crazy! I understand the people who don't like the B-52's at all. I don't agree with them, but I get it. The B-52's are an absurd, exaggerated party-rock institution, and if rubbery wackiness is not your thing, then you're going to have an uphill battle with them. It's especially rough for the people who were kids during the B-52's' heyday. Nobody wants to be the one kid with their arms folded, leaning against the wall and scowling at the middle-school dance while all their friends are losing it to "Love Shack." That's a rough place to be. You have to feel for those people.

I can also understand the people who don't really like the B-52's album Good Stuff, even if I don't agree with those people, either. The group hit a wild, unexpected career peak when their 1989 album Cosmic Thing crossed over to pop-blockbuster status, going quadruple platinum and sending multiple singles into the upper reaches of the Hot 100. The B-52's struggled to follow that album, and they made it without one very important member. There's a lot of fun to be found on Good Stuff, but if people were hoping for another Cosmic Thing, then those people were going to be disappointed. We only get one Cosmic Thing, and we should be glad to have it. Compared to Cosmic Thing, Good Stuff is a little leaden and self-important, even if it's a total blast when compared to virtually anything else.

But "Good Stuff," the song? Come on. Some things couldn't possibly be more obvious. I didn't realize that some people made a big show out of not liking "Good Stuff" until I sat down to do research for this column, but Google results for the track are full of hate. I don't get that. It's befuddling. The B-52's were way outside the alt-rock moment when they made "Good Stuff," but they were always way outside the alt-rock moment. If anything, it's hilariously endearing that the B-52's had their last moment of real Modern Rock glory during the same summer when the Chili Peppers/Soundgarden/Pearl Jam version of Lollapalooza was packing people in across the country. That's the power of anachronism at work!

Listen: If you don't want to hear a B-52's sex song, one where it's basically just Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider making Tex Avery cartoon-wolf noises for six fucking minutes, then you don't get the B-52's. (That's the album version. The single edit is way shorter, but I'm of the opinion that more "Good Stuff" is better.) "Good Stuff" is pure, distilled B-52's, and it kicks ass. Sorry.

The success of Cosmic Thing must've been validating, but that didn't mean that it was easy on the B-52's. They recorded the album after the death of their beloved bandmate Ricky Wilson, and then they toured the record until they were all worn out. In 1990, the band played to something like 750,000 people at a Central Park Earth Day concert. (That number looks inflated to me, but it's the one that I keep seeing.) Immediately afterward, Cindy Wilson, whose harmonies with Kate Pierson were so crucial to Cosmic Thing, announced that she needed a break from the band. She was exhausted and missing her brother Ricky, and she wanted to go have kids, so that's what she did. Her hiatus lasted for four years.

During the time in between album cycles, the B-52's never quite went away. Kate Pierson sang on a couple of big modern rock hits, Iggy Pop's "Candy" and R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People." Fred Schneider's 1984 solo album got a reissue, and one of his singles crashed the Hot 100. In 1990, the New York group Deee-Lite had a huge hit with "Groove Is In The Heart," an absolute banger that basically amounts to a club-kid take on the B-52's formula. Its vibes are extremely B-52's, even if Deee-Lite had to outsource Fred Schneider duties to their guests Bootsy Collins and Q-Tip. For a minute there, you might even argue that the B-52's were influential.

The B-52's kept touring, with the late Twin Peaks singer Julee Cruise filling in for Cindy Wilson, which is fun to think about. On her David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti collaborations, Cruise didn't exactly radiate B-52's energy, but she still took the gig. At one 1992 performance, a fundraiser for Jerry Brown's presidential campaign, the band played with Kim Basinger in the Cindy Wilson role, which is maybe even more fun to think about. Basinger didn't go for the full bun hairdo, but her puffy early-'90s hair was close enough.

In a 2018 Rolling Stone oral history, B-52's drummer-turned-guitarist Keith Strickland basically said that they had to be pressured to record Good Stuff: "Cindy had left the band after Cosmic Thing, and we were burnt out from so much touring but we had to write another album quickly. Our manager at the time pushed us." The band reunited with their Cosmic Thing producers Nile Rodgers and Don Was, and they recorded the LP as a trio, with an army of session musicians. On the LP, they got a little more into vague peace-and-love messaging. I don't hear any of that on "Good Stuff," though.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the good stuff in "Good Stuff" is sex. Don Was produced the track, but it sounds like a Nile Rodgers joint, with its high-stepping bassline, spidery guitars, and busy-ass congas. It's the kind of shiny, happy party song that would've fit just fine on Cosmic Thing, but I hear a little bit of disco-house deep in the mix -- maybe an example of the B-52's riding Deee-Lite's wave after Deee-Lite rode their wave. In the "Good Stuff" video, the B-52's dress like New York club kids, which looks pretty funny. But the B-52's always looked funny, so it's not like they were zagging hard against their roots. RuPaul, who was already in the "Love Shack" video and who was a year away from releasing Supermodel Of The World, features prominently.

"Good Stuff" is a funny song. The idea of Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider barking about how bad they wanted to fuck each other is funny. When Pierson opens the track with an "oooooh, baby" and Schneider irritably honks back ("What?"), that's funny! When the two of them harmonize about nibbling your toes and tickling your nose? Funny! There is also this Fred Schneider moment: "The Big Dipper sure ain't big enough! To hold all of your dang! Good! Stuff! Some people say we're downright nasty! I just say we're down riiiiight!" That's amazing! That's the best shit! For a good time, I strongly recommend that you imagine two people -- any two people, really -- having sex while listening to "Good Stuff." It might not be the silliest sex song in history, but off the top of my head, I can't think of one sillier.

"Good Stuff" doesn't have anything like the heart-searing hooks of "Roam" or "Deadbeat Club," and the presence of Cindy Wilson is missed. But Kate Pierson's charisma is huge, and she belts hard enough to sound like two people. It's fun to hear her wailing over Schneider's vaguely doo-wop bum-bums, and it's fun to hear her roaring about how she wants some of that good stuff, baby. It's a deeply insincere song, and it never reaches the anthemic heights of "Love Shack," but the goofy-giddy feeling still works for me. The B-52's were light years away from their kitsch-damaged new wave roots when they made "Good Stuff," but I still hear echoes of their old sound in the burping farfisa, the screaming theremin, and the rush of guitars on the chorus. And anyway, the new-wave B-52's never would've thought to let Fred Schneider attempt his version of a deep-voiced Barry White "yeeeeah," and why wouldn't you want that?

In the context of the B-52's' surprisingly long run, "Good Stuff" is a bit minor. The song still crossed over to pop radio, peaking at #28. In the context of radio-ready circa-1992 alt-rock, "Good Stuff" was a glorious fluke. As a kid, I was into it, though not enough to buy the album. Lots of people weren't into the song enough to buy the album. That was the problem. Good Stuff went gold, but that was just a fraction of what the group racked up with Cosmic Thing. Follow-up single "Tell It Like It T-I-Is," which isn't as good as "Good Stuff" but which is still pretty good, peaked at #13. The Good Stuff LP became one of the records that lost the Best Alternative Album Grammy to Tom Waits' Bone Machine, which is becoming a recurring theme in this column.

After Good Stuff, the B-52's didn't record another album for many years. Instead, they slowly slid into legacy-act territory and became a big presence in the world of children's entertainment. In 1994, for instance, the band appeared in the live-action Flintstones movie, which was a huge hit even though it has left absolutely zero pop-cultural legacy. In the film, the B-52's appear as the BC-52's. Funny! (I guess they'd be the BCE-52's now.) They recorded a version of the Flintstones theme for the soundtrack, and it reached #33 on the Hot 100 but didn't even scratch the Modern Rock chart. Alternative music was in a different place by then, and perhaps people didn't necessarily want to hear Fred Schneider yelling "yabba-dabba-doo" on the peak-grunge airwaves.

Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson sang one of the theme songs for the Nickelodeon show Rocko's Modern Life, and the B-52's had a track called "The Chosen One" on the soundtrack of the motion picture Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Once again: Fun, even if that song actually sucks. Somewhere in there, Fred Schneider recorded a 1996 solo album with the late Steve Albini, who brought in members of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Didjits, and Tar to back him up. (Albini talked about those sessions with Stereogum in what may have been his final interview.) In 1998, the B-52's released the hits collection Time Capsule, and they landed on the Modern Rock chart one last time when "Debbie," their bonus-track ode to Blondie's Debbie Harry, peaked at #35. (Debbie Harry's highest-charting Modern Rock hit, 1989's "I Want That Man," peaked at #2. It's an 8.)

By the late '90s, the B-52's were an important part of the burgeoning '80s-nostalgia circuit, and they've been there ever since, touring with contemporaries like the Go-Go's and Tears For Fears. They made one more album, 2008's Funplex. It seemed like a big deal that they went 16 years between albums, but now they've gone another 16 years, and that's fine. Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson have made solo albums of their own in the last few years. The B-52's finished a farewell tour in 2023, and then they immediately announced a Las Vegas residency, which is pretty funny.

In retrospect, 1992 would've been the last possible time that the B-52's could've been a presence on alt-rock radio. A wave of self-seriousness was coming in, and lots of great music came along with it, but that music generally lacked the slide-whistle silliness of the B-52's. It's probably also worth nothing that grunge-era modern rock radio was way less hospitable to women and to loudly queer and campy voices like Fred Schneider. As alternative rock conquerors, the B-52's were a miracle. Miracles aren't supposed to last forever, but this one made it a mighty long time.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: Here's something fun: The "Good Stuff" single featured a remix from a young Moby, still an ascendant rave DJ at the time. Moby's Schottische Mix of "Good Stuff" sounds exactly as you'd expect a rave-era Moby B-52's remix to sound. It's pretty good. Here, listen:

(Moby's highest-charting Modern Rock hit, the Gwen Stefani collab "South Side," peaked at #3 in 2001. It's an 8.)

BONUS BONUS BEATS: I have never seen the 1994 film D2: The Mighty Ducks, so I don't know why there's a scene of the Ducks gawping while models try on dresses for them. I can, however, tell you that "Good Stuff" soundtracks that scene. Here it is, helpfully captured by someone holding up a camera to a TV:

THE 10S: L7's dizzily deadpan bubblegrunge bop "Pretend We're Dead" -- a song with at least a little bit of B-52's in its DNA -- peaked at #8 behind "Good Stuff." What's up with what's going down is that "Pretend We're Dead" is one of my favorite songs of all time, an obvious 10.