Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: Debbie Gibson, “Lost in Your Eyes”

26 years ago today, Debbie Gibson earned the second #1 hit of her career with a ballad that served as the soundtrack to many a first kiss in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, even if it might be better remembered by Family Guy fans as the song Stewie sang when he auditioned for American Idol.

As the first single for her sophomore album, Electric Youth, a tremendous amount of weight was placed on the shoulders of “Lost in Your Eyes,” but given that her previous #1 hit had also been a ballad (“Foolish Beat”), there was certainly reason to believe that following in its footsteps wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world…and, indeed, it wasn’t.

Gibson, however, had already gotten a feel for how well audiences liked the song from having introduced it to her live set during the Out of the Blue tour, and in a 2014 interview with Billboard, she recalled the crowds’ reactions.

“From the opening two bars of the piano intro, it elicited screams from audiences,” she said. “It had yet to be recorded or played on the radio, but it was already a hit. That’s not ego talking. It’s just true of any artist and any song that has that feeling of being familiar yet new. My acting teacher, Howard fine, said that phrase to me in relation to what is a hit, be it a hit piece of theater or a hit song. It’s so true. It’s like an old friend: you predict that the melody is going to go in a satisfying way.”

“Lost in Your Eyes” proved to be the biggest hit of Gibson’s career, remaining in the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks while also climbing to #3 on the magazine’s Adult Contemporary chart. As you might imagine, the song remains a staple of the singer’s sets to this day - “Obviously, dance songs can stand the test of time, but nothing penetrates and spans all age groups, all ethnicities or all genders like a ballad,” Gibson told Billboard. “One of my favorite things, to this day, is that many people come up to me and tell me that they learned how to play the piano from that song and from that sheet music, which is such an honor to me. I curse my younger self, though, every time I go to belt the high D at the end live!”