Published on Jul 3, 1997
I knew my wife was up to something when I returned home this
evening. When I walked in the door, she had a cold beer waiting for
me. She took me to my favorite restaurant. And when we got back,
she sprang it on me: “Can I make a request for a review?”
Now, Mrs. Thelen’s tastes in music are much more different than
mine – but she has put up with a lot of the music I’ve listened to
for review purposes. (She did, however, describe Iron Butterfly as
“grounds for divorce”.) But when she asked me to review Debbie
Gibson, I thought this couldn’t be all bad. After all, I had
purchased – willingly – a few of her albums, and they weren’t
horrid.
Her 1987 debut
Out Of The Blue shows a young songwriter who has some
moments of brilliance, but whose relative immaturity as a performer
and her overdependence on synthesizers are her tragic flaws.
When this came out, Gibson and fellow teen star Tiffany were
competing for the dance-pop market. In the end, Gibson won the war
– Tiffany was dropped after three albums. But Gibson didn’t seem to
capture the sheer popularity of her “rival.”
The album starts off strong with the title track, where Gibson
sounds a tad like Madonna in her early days, though the styles
differ. Gibson shows her vocal talents as well as on keyboards –
and in a sense, this is the beginning of the danger signs. I know
that I should expect to hear a great deal of synthesizers in dance
music – doesn’t mean I have to like it. I will always prefer the
sound of acoustic drums to those produced by a keyboard, and it
wouldn’t have hurt to include some on this album.
Gibson holds her own on songs like “Only In My Dreams” and her
other hit single “Shake Your Love,” which – despite the jokes made
by some comedians – has nothing to do with physically shaking
anything. (My daddy always told me that if I was shaking it more
than twice, I was playing with it… oops.) But Gibson’s true
strength could have been in the adult-contemporary vein,as heard on
“Foolish Beat” – though even here, less electronics would have been
wise.
The electronic overkill is one of the downfalls of the remainder
of
Out Of The Blue – but on songs like “Red Hot,” “Wake Up To
Love” and “Play The Field,” the weaknesses of a young songwriter
come out. Not that this is a damning feature of Gibson – everyone
has to go through a learning curve as a songwriter. But I find it
hard to swallow that a teenager is singing about true love and
staying together. Hell, I’m in my mid-twenties and I couldn’t claim
to be an expert in these fields. Here’s someone – what, was she 16
when she recorded this? – lecturing
me! I don’t think so.
In one sense, maybe it’s not fair for a man to be reviewing an
album that was, in all reality, geared towards the teenage girl
market. While all the guys in my class were slamming our heads into
the lockers in time with the latest Iron Maiden record, the girls
were talking about this. But, hey, I like to think I’ve got an open
enough mind to be able to listen to this.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad album – Gibson has rarely
done anything which made me want to rip the tape out of the deck.
And she was quite comfortable in her genre of choice. Add to this
that she is a talented singer and you do have the makings of a
possible success. But
Out Of The Blue, while worth a listen or two, is not up to
that potential she had – and still has.
As for the wife – well, she hasn’t read the review just yet, but
I don’t think she’ll be offering me dinners out anymore.