I must admit I was only a baby at the height of Debbie Gibson's popularity, but her music is terrific! Her song, "Foolish Beat," gets me every time, and it's amazing to think that she wrote, sang, and produced that song when she was 17!!! On this collection of her hits, four come from her debut album, "Out of the Blue": "Only in My Dreams" (#4 in 1987), "Shake Your Love" (also #4 in 1987), "Foolish Beat" (#1 in 1988), and "Staying Together" (a Top Forty hit in 1988). Four songs are pulled from her sophomore album, "Electic Youth": "Lost in YOur Eyes" (#1 in 1989), the title track (#11 in 1989), "No More Rhyme" (#17 in 1989), and "We Could Be Together" (#71 in 1989). Two songs are pulled from her fourth album: "When I Say No" and "Goodbye." The only missing songs from this collection are "Out of the Blue" (#3 in 1988), and "Anything is Possible" (#26 in 1991). For those people who want a casual collection of her hits (since she only had ten Hot 100 hits), this is a nice one for a really inexpensive price.
Deborah Gibson, or Debbie as she was known when she recorded many of these songs, is surely dissappointed about the contents of this cd. Her far superior Atlantic greatest hits package greatly outdoes this meek attempt.
First it is important to note that all of the singles from Out of the Blue and Electric Youth are present but nothing from Anything Is Possible (specifically it's top 10 title track co-written by Miss Gibson and Mowtown icon Lamont Dozier) or that albums other hit One Hand, One Heart. Plus, from Debbie's 1993 Body Mind Soul (her only album to garner abundant critical praise) there are only that album's throw-away tracks and not it's wonderful Losin' Myself (wonderfully remixed on the atlantic greatest hits) or Shock Your Mama, How Can this Be?, etc.
All in all a weak attempt. While there are certainly some glaring omission from the first greatest hits -- this one is just stinky. Deborah has a new album coming out in late 2000 -- I'd just wait until then or try to find used copies of Anything is Possible or Body Mind Soul.
Granted, you're probably swayed by the cheap price of this, but I would suggest getting all of Debbie's full length albums instead. She was one artist who was known to have some killer album tracks, and in fact her single releases were sometimes not as good as the tracks on her full albums.
This is best evidenced on this budget set, which is a huge mistake and a very poor way of showcasing Gibson's catalog. The Tiffany CD released at around the same time was a little better.
The Tracklist:
1. Lost In Your Eyes (from "Electric Youth", 1989)
2. Only In My Dreams (from "Out of the Blue", 1987)
3. Staying Together (from "Out of the Blue", 1987)
4. Foolish Beat (from "Out of the Blue", 1987)
5. We Could Be Together (from "Electric Youth, 1987)
6. Electric Youth (from "Electric Youth, 1987)
7. No More Rhyme (from "Electric Youth, 1987)
8. When I Say No (from "Body Mind Soul", 1992)
9. Goodbye (from "Body Mind Soul", 1992)
10. Shake Your Love (from "Out of the Blue", 1987)
As you can tell, most of the tracks are from her 1986-1987 debut album "Out of the Blue" (perhaps the least accomplished CD from her). Debbie's best work would be on her later albums, most notably "Anything is Possible" and "Think with your Heart". None of these albums even feature here. Whats worse, they took the worst songs from "Body Mind Soul" and tacked them on here. Terrible.
Debbie is one artist who has two Greatest Hits albums to her name, but each of them are extremely short (a little over 30 minutes) and have really bad song selection. The only way to get her good songs is to get her studio albums. I recommend starting with "Electric Youth" first.
