The B-52s' Cosmic Thing

The B-52s were always queer, though not overtly, and this book dissects the coded queer messaging in the B-52s music, using Cosmic Thing as a launching point. Alongside the authors own queer awakening, this book looks at what was obvious all along - the B-52s aren't just pop culture icons, they are queer history.

The B-52s fifth record Cosmic Thing took the world by storm in 1989 in the wake of the band's single greatest tragedy: losing guitarist Ricky Wilson to complications from AIDS in 1985. Cosmic Thing is a celebration of queer joy in the face of that seismic setback. Not only did the B-52s have to fight through their pain and grief to make Cosmic Thing, they were up against a conservative government under Reagan (then Bush), a misunderstood virus still ravaging the queer community and the expectations of what 'serious' artists were supposed to look like.