These two albums by precocious teens have sparked talk about the resurgence of the bubblegum sound. But Debbie Gibson and Tiffany have produced bubblegum with a decidedly different flavor. The first time around, records by fabricated groups like the Archies, the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Company were cleverly crafted teeny-bop fantasies conceived and sung by adults for a market of teens and children. Yet even though they might have been created for cynical reasons, songs like "1, 2, 3 Red Light" and "Yummy Yummy Yummy" at least caught some of the innocence and burgeoning sexuality of youth. They also implicitly recognized adolescence as a time of life distinct from adulthood.
contrast, the governing fantasy of
Out of the Blue, by Debbie Gibson, and
Tiffany is not undying love, inextinguishable passion or that other staple of young people's music, garage-rock authenticity. Gibson and Tiffany are yuppie wanna-bes, consciously aspiring to solvent adulthood and eager not to waste potential earning years. This is, as they say, a sign of the times.
Like too many of their elders, Deb and Tiff are perfectly content to define themselves and their music as products. In the acknowledgments on Out of the Blue, Gibson credits her father as "my very own live-in promotion force" and cites two other useful men on the scene as "the saint of sales" and "the madman of marketing." Her avowed ambition is to win a Grammy – that ultimate symbol of music-biz respectability. Tiffany, whose very name is an image of commercial wealth and status, made a media splash by marketing her record with performances in shopping malls.
As Gibson's "Shake Your Love" and any number of tracks on Tiffany make clear, Madonna is the role model for these material girls. But Madonna's frank eroticism, working-class scrappiness, dance-club roots and ability to shed and assume identities make her more subversive than Gibson or Tiffany evidently realize. So what they deliver is sanitized, one-dimensional mimicry of Madonna's charisma and vital grooves.
But Gibson and Tiffany can be lumped together only to that degree. Gibson is more talented, and her record, despite its flaws, is considerably more satisfying than Tiffany. While "Shake Your Love" can be dismissed as slight and derivative, "Only in My Dreams" – with its yearning choruses, peppy percussion, cute background vocals and spirited sax part – is a first-rate single. On that tune and elsewhere – notably "Play the Field" and "Between the Lines" – Gibson reveals herself as a skillful and expressive singer who will gain depth as she matures. Even more impressive, Gibson wrote all ten songs on Out of the Blue and had a hand in the album's production.
Tiffany, however, is an artificial construction that Tiffany occupies with neither authority nor uniqueness. This is not ultimately her fault. The main problem is that the
