Nowadays, numerous songs become hits after artists have built buzz teasing them on TikTok and other social platforms. By the time a song is released in its entirety, it’s common for fans to already be familiar with it.
In the late ‘80s, artists had fewer avenues to preview new music, but still one key one: playing unreleased songs on tour. Debbie Gibson took advantage of that opportunity during shows supporting her smash debut album, Out of the Blue, which yielded four Billboard Hot 100 top 10s in 1987-88, including her historic first No. 1, “Foolish Beat.”
In addition to spotlighting her breakthrough hits on the road, Gibson took to the piano to unveil the love song “Lost in Your Eyes.”
“I was so excited about this song that I couldn’t wait to perform, so I did a sneak preview live on tour way before it was ever released,” Gibson recalls to Billboard.
The song became the first single from the then-18-year-old’s sophomore 1989 album, Electric Youth. The ballad, which Gibson wrote and produced solo (as with “Foolish Beat”), soared to No. 1 for three weeks on the Hot 100 beginning with the chart dated that March 4. A week later, Electric Youth, released on Atlantic Records, began a five-week reign on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Wrote Paul Grein in the Chart Beat column in the March 11, 1989, Billboard issue, “Gibson this week becomes the first teen star to have the No. 1 pop album and single simultaneously since Little Stevie Wonder more than 25 years ago. Gibson [is] the first female teen star ever to achieve this double play.” Plus, “Gibson has equaled the achievement of several of her role models: Olivia Newton, in 1974; Elton John hit the jackpot twice in 1975; Billy Joel triumphed in 1980; and George Michael scored twice last year.”
Electric Youth produced four Hot 100 hits, with “Lost in Your Eyes” followed by two more top 20 singles, the anthemic title cut and contemplative ballad “No More Rhyme,” plus longtime fan-favorite sing-along “We Could Be Together.”
Gibson has continued to expand her Billboard chart history, as she sent her first seasonal collection, Winterlicious, into the top 20 of Top Holiday Albums in 2022. It followed her first proper LP of all-new music in two decades, The Body Remembers, which hit the Top Current Albums and Top Album Sales charts in 2021. A veteran of Broadway, film and TV, Gibson most recently appeared on Fox’s The Masked Singer, Celebrity Name That Tune (in a friendly face-off against Belinda Carlisle) and We Are Family. Currently, she’s working on her upcoming memoir.
Upon the 35th anniversary of “Lost in Your Eyes” topping the Hot 100, Gibson gives Billboard an exclusive countdown, below, of the chart that week in 1989, musing about each hit in the top 20. The song led over fellow enduring hits from acts including The Bangles, Rick Astley and Guns N’ Roses; a duet (co-written by Richard Marx) between Heart’s Ann Wilson and Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander; and classics from Tone-Loc, New Kids on the Block, Sheena Easton and more. –Gary Trust
