Songoftheday 7/7/15 - Everytime I tell a secret I remember how it used to be, and I realize how much I miss you and I realize how it feels to be free...

"Only In My Dreams" - Debbie Gibson
from the album Out Of The Blue (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16

Today's SOTD is by Debbie Gibson, who spent her ("electric") youth in Long Island, where she was a musical child prodigy that performed in theatre and even the Metropolitan Opera in New York. When she was only thirteen she wrote what would be her first single, "Only In My Dreams". Produced by Fred Zarr and mixed my Little Louie Vega of the DJ duo Masters at Work, the Madonna-esque bubbly dance-pop tune was simple but absolutely fun, and the kids (and many a gay man) ate it up. Debbie shot the video on the beach in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and to give credit it neither plays her up as a child nor oversexualizes her (and even had a cute cameo from her mom)...

"Only In My Dreams" reached the top-5 on the American pop chart in September of 1987, spending four months in the top-40 (one of only four songs that year to do so) and seven months on the Hot 100. The record also climbed to #12 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, and #31 on their adult contemporary radio list. Internationally, the song went to #6 in Canada and just missed the top-10 at #11 in the UK.

And always, Gibson > Tiffany.

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Here's Debbie performing the song live at her popularity peak in 1988..

and here's the 12" version that she toured the gay clubs with...

On tour again in Japan in 1991...

...and finally bringing the 80s back to Good Morning America (complete with hunky dancers and bare midriff) in 2011...

Up tomorrow: A jazz vocal star sets the stage for Maddie and David.