Cindy Wilson Explores New Realms

Singer Cindy Wilson started working on Realms, her second full-length solo album, right before the COVID pandemic cropped up, a complication that made the writing and recording process take much longer than she’d originally expected. Then, starting in 2022 and on through this year, her longtime band the B-52s embarked on a massive “farewell” tour, further delaying her work.

But Realms will finally be released on August 25, via the Kill Rock Stars label—and, with her typical sunny attitude, Wilson sees the positive aspects of the album’s long gestation: “It’s [like] a slow baking cake, which sometimes is better,” she says. “And because you were so tense during COVID times, it was definitely a relief to be able to be creative. It’s a psychological thing. I like working—I feel like it’s an important thing to do because I enjoy it, and it’s healthy for me to do it.”

Wilson released her first full-length solo studio album, Changes, in 2017. For that one, she worked with producers/electronic musicians Ryan Monahan and Suny Lyons. “They were modern and young and playful. I loved the way it turned out. We had a lot of fun doing it,” she says of that project. 

So when Wilson started thinking about doing another album, she reached out to Lyons and asked if he’d be interested in working with her again (Monahan was already committed to other projects). This time, she wanted Lyons to take on an even greater role, “so we ended up meeting every two weeks and slowly building the record.

“It started like anything else, with jamming,” she continues. “Suny brought structured synthesized music, so we jammed on top of that. We were using nonsense words at first, and building the structure that way. The lyrics would morph and the music was changing, and so finally it became something. It was a slow process, but magically, it all came together. I was bowled over.”

Lyons’s easygoing style made her feel comfortable, which in turn encouraged her creativity and adventurousness with these songs. “It was so cool to work with Suny. He’s really clever, and he used my strengths: he didn’t fight my eccentricities, like my Southern accent, and some of my dissonant qualities of my voice sometimes. But he knew that I had a very expressive voice. I can do light moods or I can do funny or I can go deep shades of blue. I can even combine them and be ironic sometimes.”

Musically, there’s a playful and unpredictable vibe on many of these songs, such as nods to disco, New Wave, and techno. “There’s a lot of different moods on the album. It sounds modern to me, but also, it has elements of the past, too,” Wilson says. This diversity led her to title the album Realms “because it’s like each song is like a room you go through.”

While all of the tracks are meaningful to her, she singles out the evocative ballad “Not Goodbye” as being especially significant: “Let’s face it: advancing age is happening,” she says amiably. “But I just wanted to convey to the fans and people that enjoyed the B-52s music all these years that it’s all OK, it’s not going to be goodbye. We have our memories and all that, right?”

She’s referring to the announced retirement of the B-52s, the beloved band she co-founded in Athens, Georgia in 1977—although she admits, that pronouncement might’ve been a bit premature, given that at the time of this writing, they were set to perform a series of shows in Las Vegas this August, and she says more concerts are in the works for this year and next. “We said we were retired, but we’re actually [still] working,” she says with a laugh. “It’s going to be a soft retirement. We’re just slowly leaving.”

The B-52s origin story can arguably be traced back to Wilson’s childhood when she was growing up in Athens. She often sang with her older brother Ricky, who was also a talented guitarist. This drew her out of her shell: “It was so good for me to sing because I’m kind of a quiet person, and so it’s so healing to bring the inside out. It’s therapy, definitely.” 

The two of them would go on to become co-founding members of the B-52s, an unabashedly quirky and positivity-infused New Wave rock band when she was only nineteen years old. “We didn’t know we were forming a big rock group that would last forty-something years. We just started as a playful, creative thing to do,” she says.

The band would eventually help make the Athens, Georgia music scene one of the most famous in the world (R.E.M., Widespread Panic, and many other notable bands also got their start there). It’s a town she once more calls home, after spending a few years in New York and Atlanta. “It’s a good place to be again,” she says, adding that she was lured back because of “the creativity here. There’s also a lot of interesting people that come through because of the University [of Georgia]. Also, I think the Southern culture is welcoming. Plus, Athens is always changing, but there’s an undercurrent that remains the same.”

Back in the 1970s, though, it was a much quieter place. “We had to make our own fun in Athens back then; it’s not like it is now,” she says, referring to the party atmosphere that pervades the college town. 

When the B-52s first began, music venues such as the legendary 40 Watt Club didn’t exist in Athens yet—but there were always house parties, full of open-minded crowds who immediately adored the band’s zany New Wave rock, funky fashion sense (especially Wilson and fellow singer Kate Pierson’s sky-high beehive hairdos) and whimsical countercultural vibe.

“We came from a freaky deaky time,” Wilson says. “Things were changing, and we were there at the right time at the right place and just being the age we were and having fun. There was no pretense. We did a lot of ironic, playful things.” Their motto, she says, was “not to take yourself too seriously, [and] use your eccentricities. We were not afraid of turning things upside down.”

Wilson still firmly holds this attitude today: “If there are rules, you break ’em! You want to be current, a little bit. But also, within that parameter, you’ve just got to let your freak flag fly.” She believes this remains a good approach for artists who are just starting their careers now: “I would say, don’t try to copy people. I would say, try to zigzag.” Then she reconsiders this, and suggests instead: “Try to zag when somebody is zigging! Try to come up with something unique.”

This method has certainly worked for the B-52s: during their five-decade career, the band has released seven albums (with combined sales topping twenty million) and earned three Grammy award nominations. They’ve cemented their status as the premiere party band with infectious hits such as “Rock Lobster,” “Planet Claire,” “Private Idaho,” “Summer of Love,” “Roam,” and, of course, their signature song, “Love Shack.”

Being in the B-52s taught Wilson that she thrives in a collaborative environment. “I like bouncing off of people and being creative,” she says, likening the band’s songwriting process as being “like a comedy office, where everybody is throwing out ideas. We would jam. We constantly tried to invent ways to present the songs. We had a good time writing. I think that was my favorite approach to it: writing being a good thing and not a task. Taking those songs after molding them and then performing them, it was really fantastic. It was magical.”

Now, looking back on her long career—and looking forward to what comes next with Realms—Wilson is content: “It’s been an amazing ride!”

Photo by John Stapleton