YMMV / The B-52s

• Anvilicious: Off stage, the band were for a time, very vocal and preachy about animal rights. Their association with controversial animal rights group PETA turned off many fans.
• Epic Riff: "Rock Lobster", "Private Idaho", "Hallucinating Pluto", "Pump", "Roam", and "Lava" are the best examples.
• Epileptic Trees: There are a ton circulating around the Throw It In! line "You're what?!/Tin roof...rusted" from "Love Shack." The prevailing theory (as pointed out by Pop Up Video) is that it's some obscure slang for "pregnant". While that statement is true, the real-life shack that "Love Shack" was based on really did have a rusted tin roof.
• Fan Nickname: The self-titled album is often known as 'the yellow album'.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With R.E.M., due to both bands hailing from Athens, Georgia, and Kate Pierson's guest appearances on Out of Time.
  • Also with fellow eccentric new wavers Talking Heads, for David Byrne's production of the Mesopotamia EP as well as Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's appearance with the band at their 1985 Rock in Rio show.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Legal Tender" is a minor hit that became absolutely huge in Brazil during the 80s nightclub boom there, to the point that fans protested the song's non-inclusion on the setlist of their 2009 concerts in Rio and São Paulo. The local version of Time Capsule even includes the song in lieu of "52 Girls".
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Love Shack" contains the line "Wearing next-to-nothin' 'cause it's hot as an oven!" The shack that inspired the song burned down in December 2004.
  • "Give Me Back My Man" and "Ain't It A Shame" are both sung by Cindy lamenting the loss of a man...and became this when her brother (and B-52's guitarist) Ricky Wilson died in 1985. In fact, "Ain't It A Shame" was one of the last songs the band recorded with him, and Cindy had no idea he had AIDS at the time.
  • In Girl From Ipanema Goes to Greenland, the lyric This girl's lost someone/Who is that someone? might strike a chord if you consider the fact that Ipanema was from Ricky's final album, and he died before the album was released. In a way, the someone that has been lost is Ricky. And the girl is Cindy. And no one other than Keith knew Ricky was literally dying during Bouncing. It might take quite a few listens to catch that.
• LGBT Fanbase: The group has a pretty good-sized one, because Fred Schneider. May also be because of all of them being LGBT, except Cindy Wilson.
• Nightmare Fuel/Nightmare Retardant: "Give Me Back My Man" oscillates between the two tropes. Lines such as "I’ll give you fish" sound jarring in a song that's about missing a lover, only making sense if one realises that said lover may have been killed and eaten by a shark...
• Periphery Demographic: Kate once said that their songs were popular with toddlers.
  • The band gained many young fans in the 16 year gap between Good Stuff and Funplex, many of whom were not born when the band started out or even during their Cosmic Thing heyday. This meant that the release of Funplex was an occasion when many fans finally got to buy an album of new material when it came out.
• Refrain from Assuming:
  • The song "Dry County" doesn't use those words until near the end of the song. The refrain (or the closest there is to one) goes "Just sit on the porch and swing... Sit on the porch..."
  • A Non-musical example with the band's first album, which is self-titled, is often mistaken as being called High Fidelity due to this phrase appearing in the upper-lefthand corner of the cover. This was actually placed there to mimic labels on older album sleeves.
• Replacement Scrappy: The general fan reaction to Julee Cruise replacing Cindy Wilson on the band's Good Stuff tour, to the point where even The Simpsons parodied it. This is extremely unfair, because Cruise knew the band's material (being a fan) possessed a similar range and look to Cindy, and gave solid performances on the tour. Anyone who stood in for Cindy - who was adamant about taking time off from the band - would have gotten this response.
• Retroactive Recognition: Before becoming a professional model and singer, RuPaul appeared as a dancer in the "Love Shack" video.
• Signature Song: Both "Rock Lobster" and "Love Shack". They have played both at every show since they were introduced and the success of them as singles was enough to sustain their entire career. To a lesser extent, they have also played "Planet Claire" and "Dance This Mess Around" at very nearly every show too, and the same with "Roam" later on.
• Tear Jerker: Cindy's solo song, "Ricky", is this since it was a tribute to him after he died.
  • "Give Me Back My Man" can come across as this (without context, anyway). Cindy sounds depressed as she sings about wanting an old lover back.
  • Both "Dry County" and "Follow Your Bliss" off Cosmic Thing could be considered this in light of being written after Ricky Wilson's death.
  • Although an uplifting love song, "Revolution Earth" also doubles as this, particularly as Kate revealed in a 2020 interview that performing the song in 1992 allowed her to cope with the news of her sick father.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The band was popular with younger children, yet they have songs that are not very kid-friendly such as "Quiche Lorraine" (about bestiality, specifically about a poodle who runs away from Fred Schneider, dumping him for a Great Dane), "Dirty Back Road" (which is an Unusual Euphemism for doing it doggystyle), the below-mentioned songs about alcohol, and we should probably stop before we accidentally list all of "Good Stuff".

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