Happy 30th: Debbie Gibson, ELECTRIC YOUTH

30 years ago today, Debbie Gibson released her sophomore album, an LP which provided her with the second #1 hit single of her career. In addition, by celebrating its arrival on record store shelves three freaking decades ago, ELECTRIC YOUTH now also offers a burst of irony, as this piece of information will probably make you feel really, really old.

Co-produced by Gibson with Fred Zarr, ELECTRIC YOUTH was not an LP which suffered from the usual new-artist saga where there’s a lifetime to write the first album and six months to write the follow-up, “I had presented Atlantic Records with more than a hundred songs before they signed me, just to release ‘Only in My Dreams’ as a 12-inch single, to make sure it wasn't a fluke, since I was a teenager who wrote,” Gibson told Billboard in 2014. “So, even though some of the songs [on "Youth"] were written after OUT OF THE BLUE came out, many were actually from that first batch of songs I wrote between the ages of 12 and 16.”

The immense success Gibson found with ELECTRIC YOUTH came in no small part from the album’s first single, “Lost in Your Eyes,” which was the #1 hit we referenced earlier (and which we wrote about right here), but the album scored other chart hits as well, including the title track, “No More Rhyme,” and “We Could Be Together.”

If you revisit ELECTRIC YOUTH in 2019, you may find that the charms you recall from when you used to listen to it in the ‘80s are still there, even if your kids or – GASP! – grandkids might not feel the same way. If that’s the case, just tell ‘em it’s because the youth of today isn’t electric enough to appreciate it…and if they try to argue with you, just drown ‘em out by cranking up “Electric Youth.”