Debbie Gibson - Deborah (1997)

Debbie Gibson made one of the hardest transitions in show business: she turned her success as a teen idol into a lasting, enduring career. Gibson rocketed up the charts with Out of the Blue, the 1987 debut album that generated four Billboard Top Ten singles, including "Only in My Dreams," "Shake Your Love," and "Out of the Blue." "Foolish Beat," the last of these, reached the top of the Billboard charts, making Gibson the youngest woman to write, produce, and record a number one single; she was 16 at the time of its recording. Gibson's effervescent dance-pop and crafty balladry carried her through a second smash hit album, 1989's Electric Youth -- its lead single, "Lost in Your Eyes," became her second number one -- but as fashions and tastes changed in the early 1990s, her potency as a hitmaker waned. She never stopped working, though. After her 1991 album Anything Is Possible, Gibson turned to the stage, making her Broadway debut in Les Miserables in 1992 and then heading to London for a production of Grease. By 1998, she made the leap to the silver screen with a starring role in My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, and from that point forward she spent a considerable amount of time alternating between television and film, all the while continuing to perform music. New records slowed during this period but she made a splashy comeback in 2021 with The Body Remembers, a deliberate evocation of her dance-pop prime.

Gibson began writing songs in her early childhood, taking piano lessons from Morton Estrin (who also taught Billy Joel) from the age of five. At the age of six she wrote "Make Sure You Know Your Classroom," but it was "I Come from America," which she wrote at age 12, that earned wide recognition for her talents. "I Come from America" won $1,000 dollars in a songwriting contest, prompting her parents to sign a management contract with Doug Breithart. Breithart helped Gibson learn several instruments, as well as teaching her how to arrange, engineer, and produce records; she would record over 100 of her own songs by 1985.

While she was still in high school, Debbie Gibson signed with Atlantic Records and began recording her debut album with producer Fred Zarr. "Only in My Dreams," her debut single, climbed to number four when it was released in the summer of 1987. It was followed in the fall by the dance-oriented "Shake Your Love," which also peaked at number four; the single also became a hit in Britain, reaching number seven. Out of the Blue, her debut album, was released in the fall of 1987, and by the spring of 1988, it had reached the American Top Ten. The title track became a number-three hit that spring and was followed by her first number one single, "Foolish Beat," making her the youngest artist ever to write, perform, and produce a number one single. Following the success of "Foolish Beat," Gibson graduated from Calhoun High School in Merrick, New York with honors. "Staying Together," released in the fall of 1988, didn't perform as well as her previous four singles, stalling at number 22. By the end of 1988, Out of the Blue had gone triple platinum in the U.S.

"Lost in Your Eyes," the first single from her second album, Electric Youth, became Gibson's biggest hit early in 1989, staying at number one for three weeks. Electric Youth, released in the spring of 1989, also hit number one, spending five weeks at the top of the charts. However, her popularity began to slip by the end of the year -- "Electric Youth" just missed the Top Ten and her next two singles did progressively worse, with "We Could Be Together" unable to climb past number 71. At the end of 1990, she released her third album, Anything Is Possible; it peaked at number 41. Two years later, she released Body Mind Soul, which produced only one minor hit single, "Losin' Myself." After its release, she starred in a production of Les Miserables. Gibson returned to pop music in 1995, recording a duet of the Soft Boys' "I Wanna Destroy You" with the Los Angeles punk band the Circle Jerks and releasing a considerably softer album of her own, Think with Your Heart, which marked a departure from the dance-pop that made her famous. Released on the EMI imprint SBK, Think with Your Heart failed to chart in the U.S. Gibson formed her own label, Espiritu Records, for 1997's Deborah. She launched another label, Golden Egg, for 2001's M.Y.O.B., an album where she emphasized dance music for the first time in roughly a decade. Two years later, she released a collection of stage standards called Colored Lights: The Broadway Album on Fynsworth Alley. In 2010, Ms. Vocalist appeared on Sony Japan; it would eventually get a Western release on 2017's We Could Be Together, a ten-CD box set containing her entire recorded work until that point.

Although she did regularly play concerts, including a co-headlining tour with Tiffany Darwish in 2011 and a 1980s retro package called the Mixtape Tour in 2018, Gibson spent much of the 2010s working on film and television, appearing in a few installments of the campy Mega Shark series and the 2012 film adaptation of the jukebox musical Rock of Ages. That same year she also appeared on Celebrity Apprentice. A recurring role on Acting Dead followed in 2014, along with a position as a google on Sing Your Face Off. After starring in the Hallmark film Summer of Dreams in 2016, she appeared on Dancing with the Stars in 2017, then was cast as a judge on America's Most Musical Family in 2019.

Gibson returned to contemporary pop music in 2021 with The Body Remembers, her first album of original material to be released in America in 20 years. The following year she released the Christmas LP Winterlicious, which featured a mix of originals and carols. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine