by Lesley Aeschliman

Created on: September 17, 2008

Deborah Gibson started out in the music business in 1987, under the name Debbie Gibson. My first exposure to her music would have been during the summer of 1987, when "Only in My Dreams" was receiving airplay on pop radio; however, at the time, I had no idea who the artist was. However, when "Shake Your Love" was released as a single, I heard who did it... and at first, I didn't like the song. I think this was more due to the fact that my local pop station overplayed it than anything else. When the title track for her album, Out of the Blue, was released as the third single, it grabbed my interest, and I became a fan. A couple of months later, I got the Out of the Blue album on cassette for my thirteenth birthday. Overall, Out of the Blue is a rather solid album, although I could do without "Red Hot."

During my junior high school years, I listened to a syndicated radio show called "Hitline U.S.A.," where they would interview artists and play some of their music. I remember hearing Debbie Gibson on this show in January 1989, and it was on this show that she debuted "Lost in Your Eyes," the lead-off single for her second album, Electric Youth. When I heard the song, I fell in love with it instantly. Two months later, when my fourteenth birthday came around, I took some birthday money that I had and bought a cassette copy of the Electric Youth album. Overall, I think Electric Youth is an even stronger album than Out of the Blue. The weakest song on the album is "Shades of the Past"; while I love this song lyrically, it just plods along musically.

In 1990, Deborah released her third album, Anything is Possible. My sister bought it for me at Christmas. This is Deborah's longest album to date, spanning sixteen songs and running over an hour in length. Also, the album was sequenced so the first half has all of the uptempo songs, and the second half has all of the ballads. Over the years, I've come to the opinion that some of the songs could have been cut, and the uptempos and ballads could have been mixed together. While there are several good songs on the album, I tend to have to listen to this one on random play or picking my own sequence; if I don't, the album can become a bit of tedious listen.

In 1992, Deborah released her fourth album, Body Mind Soul. I bought it when it came out. Over the years, this has been my least favorite of her albums. There are some good songs on the album, but this isn't her strongest work. Now that I know that this was not the album she

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