Someone’s gonna get sprayed for leaving this is Rainy’s stocking.

Relieved that all of that holiday nonsense is over with?  Well, The Nest will give you an even better reason to be happy that it’s December 26th, because it’s Monday!  That’s the day each week we search through our stockings for another excellent lost song in need of re-gifting from that giant return bin behind the customer service desk we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive!  DJ Scratchy’s ready to take a sledgehammer to a giant stack of Christmas songs, while the Sponkies are busy breaking all of their new toys.  Let’s send out 2022 with one of the most talented musicians to ever fade into obscurity…

Do you remember what you were doing when you were 16 years old?  Most kids that age are hanging out at the mall Mecca, playing Fortnite, or giving each other hickeys.  Not so for one Deborah Ann Gibson, who was spending much of her junior year in high school singing in nightclubs, while writing and producing what would become her debut album, Out of the Blue.  Gibson had already won a local songwriting contest when she was 12 years old, and a demo she created in a garage recording studio of “Only In My Dreams” was enough to convince Atlantic Records in 1986 to not only give the 16 year old Gibson a recording contract, but allow her to produce her own album.

Debbie certainly wasn’t hanging out with these brats.

Gibson’s Out of the Blue would churn out hit after hit at a time when studio albums were usually milked for all they were worth.  “Only In My Dreams,” “Shake Your Love,” and the album’s title track would all hit the Top 5, but it was that album’s fourth single that would put Debbie Gibson into the record books…

“Foolish Beat” hit #1 in June of 1988, making Gibson the youngest artist to ever write, produce and perform on a song that was a US #1 hit.  While she was a ripe old 17 by the time Foolish Beat was being heard on boomboxes across the country, all the work had been done while she was just 16.  Nobody could accuse Debbie Gibson of being just another pretty young face some talent agent found to be the next big pop diva…. but she made the mistake of becoming big at the same time as another artist who pretty much embodied that phony dive mold….

Come on, dude! I sing songs that were written before I was born pretty radical!

Despite them being worlds apart in terms of how they got where they were, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany were joined at the hip by the late 80’s music consuming public… and both would become all but irrelevant by the time the 1990’s rolled around.  Gibson would at least get the chance to record another album, Electric Youth, and release the same-titled perfume (seen at the top) before her bubble of popularity popped.  That the uber-talented Debbie Gibson became just another fad while the somewhat similar Taylor Swift became an icon 20 years later is truly a crime against good music…

You just HAD to drag my name into this, didn’t you!?!? WHY DO BOYS HATE ME!?!?!?

Ah well, that’s what the Dusty Vinyl Archive is for… and when Mecca Radio surprisingly played “Foolish Beat” Friday night, I knew I had to give the now Deborah Gibson her just due.  I shall return next Monday with the first lost hit of the new year!

You go, Deborah!