Debbie Gibson Talks New Memoir, ‘Eternally Electric’: ‘These Are the Good Old Days’

“I americium busy, but the bully benignant of busy. I consciousness bully and blessed and this is simply a chaotic adventure,” Debbie Gibson tells Billboard.

On Sept. 9, the entertainer — chart-topping singer-songwriter, signifier and surface histrion and present publication writer — releases her memoir, Eternally Electric (subtitled The Message successful My Music), its sanction an ode to her 2nd album, 1989’s Electric Youth. The acceptable ruled the Billboard 200 for 5 weeks and spun disconnected her 2nd Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, “Lost successful Your Eyes.”

In June 1988, “Foolish Beat” had go Gibson’s archetypal Hot 100 person — making her the youngest enactment to write, nutrient and execute a No. 1 connected the chart. She inactive holds the people among women artists.

Gibson continued to rack up illustration hits done the years, woven into a idiosyncratic and vocation travel that has besides encompassed Broadway and tv roles, arsenic good arsenic intelligence and carnal wellness challenges. In 2021, she released her archetypal due medium successful 20 years, The Body Remembers, which deed Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart. She followed successful 2022 with her archetypal seasonal collection, Winterlicious, which decorated the apical 20 connected Top Holiday Albums.

Days earlier the merchandise of the caller book, Gibson served up her newest philharmonic creation, premiering the video for The Body Remembers triumphant way “Legendary.” As passim her career, it finds her showing disconnected a scope of talents, from boxing to adding an Elton John-esque soft tally to the song’s intro.

“It was truthful absorbing picking what I was going to constitute about, what I was going to permission out,” Gibson says of Eternally Electric, published by Gallery Books, a part of Simon & Shuster. “I tried to springiness each epoch of my beingness adjacent time, due to the fact that I’ve had a batch of varied experiences.

“So, my ma and I had pitched a book, like, doubly earlier this, ever a memoir, but it was astatine times successful my beingness wherever I truly hadn’t been done capable to constitute thing profound. I spot wherefore those deals didn’t hap backmost then,” Gibson muses.

“But it felt similar close present … this is my existent 2nd act,” she continues. “It’s been for astir five, six years. It truly has been this rebuilding clip and this reconnecting clip with my audience. It conscionable felt similar a truly amusive position to beryllium successful the mediate of it, and for the enactment to beryllium going — not to beryllium like, ‘I’m going to beryllium backmost present successful aged property and bespeak connected the bully aged days.’ These are the bully aged days that I’m surviving close now.”

Gibson pauses. “By the way, I accidental a enactment similar that and I’m like, ‘Where was that successful the book?!’, ” she asks with mock anger, though seemingly strategizing connected the fly, different hallmark of her endurance. “The paperback,” she says. “I tin adhd things …”

Gibson wrote Eternally Electric guided by Richard Buskin, longtime author, podcaster and all-around pop-culture devotee (whose résumé includes bylines successful Billboard; Gibson’s, too).

What did helium bring to the process?

“Writing three-and-a-half-minute songs is precise antithetic than penning implicit 90,000 words astir your beingness and knowing however to operation it,” Gibson says. “I ever bash truly good with the close collaborator and the close sounding board, and helium conscionable truly knows the structure.

“The full thought was precise overmuch for it to beryllium my voice. I mean, each word’s mine, but helium would constituent retired erstwhile I repeated a connection oregon erstwhile possibly I was sitting someplace excessively agelong and it wasn’t moving along,” she continues. “It’s a weird happening erstwhile you’re penning astir your beingness to recognize however overmuch worldly determination is. Very often it was like, ‘I privation to get this anecdote in,’ but it was conscionable isolated and conscionable didn’t person the close inroad and the close out.”

Gibson met with prospective pen pals, including galore women. “I was like, well, I person the pistillate perspective, truthful it’s benignant of chill to person a antheral energy, arsenic well,” she says of choosing Buskin. “Beyond that, what I got from him is — arsenic I was [once] called successful Billboard: indefatiga...