Debbie Gibson detonated a blast from the past when she stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night (Jan. 6).
The chart-topping singer-songwriter, stage and screen actress and now book author had the place partying like it was 1989 with a performance of “Electric Youth,” the title track from her sophomore album.
Gibson worked the keys, busted some dance moves, and looked heathier than most of us in the shadows of Christmas, as she hit an uptempo version of her top 40 hit, with support from the Cletones.
“Electric Youth” gives its name to Eternally Electric (subtitled The Message in My Music), her new memoir.
“It felt like right now … this is my true second act,” Gibson recently told Billboard of Eternally Electric, published by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Shuster. “It’s been for about five, six years. It really has been this rebuilding time and this reconnecting time with my audience. It just felt like a really fun perspective to be in the middle of it, and for the party to be going — not to be like, ‘I’m going to sit back now in old age and reflect on the good old days.’ These are the good old days that I’m living right now.”
“Electric Youth” peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the final year of the ‘80s, and is one of her 11 singles to impact the chart, a tally that includes two No. 1s. Its parent led the Billboard 200 chart for five weeks.
Now aged 55, Gibson’s still got that electric youth coursing through her veins. In 2021, she released her first proper album in 20 years, The Body Remembers, which hit Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart. She followed in 2022 with her first seasonal collection, Winterlicious, which decorated the top 20 on Top Holiday Albums.
Watch Gibson’s late night performance below.
