The Foolish Bleat Of Debbie Gibson's Art

I woke up this morning and thought to myself, "Am I really about to do a blog post on Debbie Gibson?"

Sometimes, a man needs to live on the edge.

Every now and then, I've heard talk about a so-called Debbie Gibson/Tiffany "rivalry." Such chatter, I feel, while well-intentioned, is uninformed and misguided. Debbie Gibson and Tiffany were rivals in about the same sense that, say, the Zombies and Herman's Hermits were rivals. The casual pop music dilettante might not have observed a noticeable demarcation point, but upon closer inspection, one spots a clear difference. The difference being: Debbie Gibson composed her own songs, and Tiffany did not. Granted, one might counter that the songs Debbie Gibson composed may not have been particularly noteworthy songs. But that's not the point. Debbie Gibson carried those little jewels of teen-pop schmaltz in her womb for nine months, suffered morning sickness, took the Lamaze classes, screamed through the agony of labor. What did Tiffany do? Tiffany just drove her pick-up truck to the adoption center. And Gibson was, by the way, about seventeen years old when she composed, produced, and performed said songs. She didn't merely know her target audience; she was her target audience.

You know what? I was sitting here staring at a bunch of Debbie Gibson song titles, and I just had the most shocking realization. I think Debbie Gibson might have been deliberately naming her song titles in a subtle stylistic homage ... to Roxy Music. Seriously. Let's play a little game here. I'm going to throw a few song titles out there, and your job is to try to tell me which songs are by Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry, and which songs are by Debbie Gibson. Ready? Set? Go! (Answers at the bottom of the post):

"Staying Together"
"Let's Stick Together"
"Angel Eyes"
"Lost In Your Eyes"
"Foolish Beat"
"While Me Heart Is Still Beating"
"Only In My Dreams"
"In Every Dream Home A Heartache"
"Don't Stop The Dance"
"Shake Your Love"
"Out Of The Blue"

Damn. Who pegged Debbie Gibson as such a '70s British art-rock aficionado?

But I digress. With her debut single "Only in My Dreams," Gibson attempted to answer the most pressing question of her age: Is generic teen pop more impressive if it's actually been written by the performer? "Probably not" is my answer, but the record-buying public apparently said "Yes," or, perhaps more likely, didn't even notice. Hanson, any thoughts? I would like to point out that when Janis Ian was 14, she wrote "Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)." Just saying.

In the video Gibson finds herself trapped in a Fellini film, waking up in a bed that's been sitting in the middle of a beach (does anyone else really want to know the details of the night she's just had?), surrounded by little girls and a priest. I think I see Marcello Mastroianni in the background playing with a beach ball somewhere. These "dreamlike" black and white shots are interspersed with color footage of Debbie cavorting on a merry-go-round, wearing hoop earrings, a cropped jacket, and ... thigh-length jean shorts? Ah, the '80s. She also copiously moves her hands in front of her face. Maybe it's just me, but this might be the rare instance of a sax solo detracting from the overall power of an '80s song.



While Madonna couldn't abandon her early, fluffy "Minnie Mouse on helium" dance-pop image fast enough, instead quickly pivoting to material about abortion and loathing her father and all that "adult" stuff, Debbie Gibson stormed into the studio clutching her copy of Madonna with all her might and said to the engineer, "I wanna sound like this!" Of course, even in her first incarnation, while her lyrics were more or less dopey, Madonna still used her videos to push boundaries. Based on the contents of the "Shake Your Love" video, I think the only thing Debbie Gibson wanted to push was ... a shoe to her ear (1:24). Favorite YouTube comments:

What brought me here? I am a UPS driver and a lady on my route is named Debbie Gibson. Every time she gets a package I walk in the office and sing " Shake your love!" LOL

Because of Debbie I learned English so well, I'm from Chile. Regards

“shake your love” by debbie gibson was a song she wrote about giving handjobs

Now that would have been boundary-pushing. Well, it turns out Debbie did have a darker, more brooding side. She just needed to be provoked, and nothing provokes a teenage girl like a bad break-up. I mean, we're not talking your run-of-the-mill break-up here. We're talking an End Of The World, Cry of Existential Agony, Lose All Faith In Humanity kind of break-up. If Debbie Gibson has an epic, soul-crushing, legacy-cementing work, that work ... would be "Foolish Beat."



It begins gently, eerily - the feather-light keyboard, acoustic guitar, and lightly-struck bell conjuring the uncertain calm of an autumn sunset. The corresponding images in the video suggest a typical, quotidian evening in New York City. Look at all those people out there, driving home from work, crossing bridges, living in their plush Manhattan digs. You know what all those people have? They have someone. And who does Debbie Gibson have? No one. We catch a quick glimpse of our bereaved at 0:06, lit in silhouette, striking a foreboding pose. She's about to tell us a tale - a heartbreaking tale.

At 0:13, the sax enters. See, this is how you use a saxophone in an '80s song. We see a man walking along a grimy city street, as steam rises up from a manhole. Suddenly, we zoom into a cafe. The narrative commences: "There was a time when/Broken hearts and broken dreams/Were over." Uh ... the grammar needs some work, but I think I get the gist of her intentions: broken hearts and broken dreams were "things of the past." She goes on: "There was a place where/All you could do was/Wish on a four leaf clover." "All you could do"? That's a pretty limited set of options. What about wishing upon a star? Throwing a coin in the well? Did it have to be a clover? The camera pans over and the film stock shifts from color to black and white, clearly giving us a depiction of happier times, as Debbie sits with her paramour while an imposing stack of coffee cups teeters on the table. Seriously, how much coffee did these two drink? No wonder why their relationship didn't work out: they were probably caffeinated up to the gills! They probably couldn't even sit still for five seconds. Talk about "shaking your love."

But then wait, look out, here comes the imitation snare drum: "But now is a new time/There is a new place/Where dreams just can't come true/It started the day when I left you, oh/I could never love again the way that I loved you, oh." Never love again? Like, ever? I don't know, Debbie. Just give it a little more time, you know, watch a movie, get drunk with some friends. He was probably an asshole anyway. He was probably the kind of guy who left the toilet seat up. I can practically hear her shimmying her hips and thrusting her chest when she belts "And WHEN we SAID goodBYE!" as the guitar strums some menacing chords and the keyboard surges. The ache, the longing is so palpable. She's like the cagey little white suburban girl who, for the first time in her sheltered, spotless life, finally discovers her inner tortured R&B diva and decides to let it rip. I love how there's a medium shot of Debbie grieving in her dressing room, and then the camera cuts to a brief close-up at 1:23 just to catch her singing "oh," and then the camera cuts right back out again. That "oh" really needed its own close-up, did it not? At 1:48, she literally wipes a tear away from her eye. Take that, Sinead O'Connor.

"Foolish Beat," how else do I love thee? I love the forlorn stroll along the New York harbor during the second chorus, I love the heavily choreographed "live concert" dance routine during the bridge, I love the snippet of castanets after the lyrics "without your heart," the little blast of synthesized brass at 3:11 (right before "break my heart"), the shot of Debbie and her former beau attempting to buy roses during the sax solo, where everything is in black and white except the roses - like that scene in Schindler's List with the girl in the red coat, only bleaker - and just as they're about to purchase a bouquet, some brat on a skateboard snatches it from them! I tell ya, it just wasn't in the cards for these two.

OK, fine, I get it. I'm sure her break-up is a bummer of epic proportions and all, but why do I still get the sense that this whole episode is merely a result of Debbie's youthful inexperience? Let me put it this way: When Karen Carpenter sings "I'll say goodbye to love," I really believe that Karen is permanently, irrevocably saying adios to romantic fulfillment. Debbie Gibson just sounds like she's having a bad weekend. Indeed, although in the last shot, her ex tosses roses into a trashcan while waiting in vain outside a Debbie Gibson concert (he really puts some fear and loathing into that toss), the melody concludes on an unexpected major chord, suggesting a sense of ... optimism and renewal? Don't worry Debbie, everything gets better in college - at least that's what they tell me.

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