The parade of teenage singing stars on the Top 40 has been fairly constant this year, with Jessica Simpson following the course of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears.
But when Debbie Gibson first stormed the charts 12 years ago at the age of 16 with “Only in My Dreams,” it wasn’t so cool to be a teenager on the charts.
When the Long Island native went looking for a record deal, “in the beginning it was a minus, it wasn’t a plus.”
Today, she’s pushing 30 and is known as Deborah Gibson, thank you, as she stars in a variety of Broadway road shows. Next week, she’s the narrator in a version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” that plays SNET Oakdale Theatre Tuesday through Nov. 7 for eight shows.
But her youthful pop stardom returns to her often.
“I forget how young I actually was,” Gibson says. “I’ll meet kids in the children’s choir we have with us at every city — they’re 15, 16 years old, and they’re babies! Then I think, I was on stage in clubs at that age, performing dance pop singles and not letting people know how young I was.”
People remind her of her stardom, which produced a handful of Top 10 hits and two No. 1 hits from 1987 to 1990.
“I have a very active fan club, and a lot of people show up, and they say, ‘Don’t get upset, I have an old album for you to sign.’ Like, why would I be upset?
“It’s funny. It’s fun to see what fans turn up with. I had some bad hairdos going on in the ’80s.”
Gibson was part of a teen idol crop in the late ’80s that included New Kids on the Block and Tiffany.
She’s well aware of the current stream of teeny-bop singers and sometimes gets compared to them.
“Doing ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was the time I realized how long I’d been in the business. Young mothers were bringing their kids to the show; the kids knew me as Belle, and the mothers knew me from my recording career.
“‘She was our Britney Spears.’ I hear mothers saying that to kids now.”
One key difference between Gibson and today’s pop stars, though, is that she wrote her own hits, which made her teenage point of view all the more convincing. To this day, she remains the youngest woman to write, produce and sing a No. 1 hit, in her case “Foolish Beat.”
“As silly as it may sound now, a song like ‘Electric Youth,’ which was just a pop song at the time, was very unique to me. I don’t think I’d hear Paula Abdul or Tiffany doing it,” she says. “It’s cheese, but it’s my own brand of cheese.”
It’s better than singing stuff that’s suited for someone much older and experienced than she was.
“I wrote what I knew,” she says. “And I was a kid who didn’t grow up too fast.”
“It terrifies me to hear an 18-year-old sing ‘come on in, let me out,’ with some conviction,” she says referring to Aguilera’s sultry hit “Genie in a Bottle.”
Likewise, it’s no surprise that Trisha Yearwood’s version of “How Do I Live” won the Grammy last year over LeAnn Rimes’ better-selling version, Gibson says.
“You do hear life experience in a voice. And you have to remain true to life and your experiences. When I was 16, I was writing about puppy love.”
Though she calls her hits “cheese,” Gibson isn’t embarrassed for her output. She teaches the children’s choir harmonies on “Only in My Dreams” “It’s really fun,” she says. “Certain songs for me never die. And, she adds, “There are worse problems you could have than to sing your No. 1 hits.
“I get frustrated when artists disown their past. It’s almost insulting to the people who were fans in the first place. Like I was a huge Wham! fan, that was a big part of my childhood. So I hated when George Michael disowned all that. I want him to take credit for it.”
Some may think Gibson is disowning her Debbie past by being called Deborah. Not so.
“If you go back and look at the credits, all my liner notes said Deborah,” she says.
In fact, she was always known as Deborah at home, she says. “The change for me came when the record company wanted to start calling me Debbie. I guess people felt comfortable calling a younger person by a cutsier name.”
Given a chance to revert to Deborah when she began devoting herself to Broadway, beginning in 1991 playing Eponine in “Les Miserables,” she jumped at it.
Broadway shows weren’t a safe haven for former teen stardom, either, she says. Instead, she says, Broadway was her initial love and she was swayed briefly by the pop music. “At 12, I was dying to be on the radio. At that age, radio ruled my life.”
In a strange twist, in the current production of “Joseph,” just about the whole cast has rubbed shoulders with teen idoldom. The star is Patrick Cassidy, whose brothers were poster boys David and Shaun. “I just ran into Shirley Jones in the hotel just last night,” Gibson says of the Cassidy mom better known for being TV’s Partridge Family matriarch.
And the Osmond Second Generation — six brothers who are sons of Osmonds family member Alan — have carried on in the family tradition, with hit singles overseas.
“It’s a teen idol fest!” Gibson exclaims. But the young cast also has a unique understanding of one another.
“They don’t assume the outside world will always respect a teen idol,” says Gibson (herself the target of a Mojo Nixon novelty song, “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child”).
Plus they probably know all the alternate exits of their hotel. “And we all can come up with good aliases!” she says.
WHAT’S NEW
Tickets for the Phish show at the Hartford Civic Center Dec. 12 go on sale Saturday at noon to avoid the crush on the phone lines when its Dec. 13 show at the Providence Civic Center goes on sale at 10 a.m.
Tickets go on sale Saturday at 9 p.m. for the Dec. 4 show by Queensryche at Oakdale in Wallingford.
Tickets for the Rage Against the Machine show at the New Haven Coliseum Dec. 5 will likely go on sale within the next couple of weeks. The Rage show at the Worcester Centrum Nov. 30 goes on sale Saturday. Gang Starr opens the tour.
Wilco opens the Richard Thompson show at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton, Mass., Nov. 18. Bela Fleck & the Flecktones are there tonight.
Rahzel, the human beat box from the Roots, returns in concert with DJ Kool (“Let Me Clear My Throat”) Friday at Trinity College Student Union in Hartford.
The on-line music festival headlined by the Who Friday in Las Vegas has fleshed out its schedule. A “Hottest Divas of Country” showcase at 5 p.m. will feature Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, Chely Wright and LeAnn Rimes. An evening show will feature The Offspring and Kiss as well as the Brian Setzer Orchestra and Tony Bennett. It’s all to be broadcast on www.pixelon.com.
The Who is said to be starting work on what would be its first new album in 18 years. It would be followed by a world tour next year.
Hugh Blumenfeld brings a revised version of his one-man show, “Red Angel: The Book of Esau,” to the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford Friday.
Elsewhere in folk this weekend, Joyce Zymeck, formerly of Justina & Joyce, plays Cafe Emmanuel in Manchester Friday.
IN THE CLUBS
Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach plays the Webster Theatre in Hartford on Dec. 7. It’s for 18 and over. Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell plays a 21-and-over show at the Webster Underground Nov. 5.
Dream Theater plays Toad’s Place Dec. 10. Michael Shelley opens for They Might Be Giants there Friday.
One of the highlights of the season at the Tune Inn in New Haven comes Saturday with the annual Convulsive Pleasure Ball featuring the Botswanas, the Reducers, Big Bad Johns and the Raging Teens. A band called Kill Gwyneth Paltrow opens.
The Tune Inn Halloween show Sunday features React, Broken, Boiling Man, Two Men Advantage, Dead Nation, Phil O Shea, With the Goods and 138, a Misfits cover band featuring ex members of Pist.
The actual Misfits, meanwhile, play City Limits in Waterbury Nov. 6 with GWAR, Murphy’s Law and Speedealer, a bill that also plays the Palladium in Worcester Nov. 5. Corrosion of Conformity, who last appeared in the state two years ago (in a headlining Tuxedo Junction gig and opening for Metallica at the Hartford Civic Center), headlines a show at City Limits Saturday with Karma to Burn, Minus and Simple opening.
