From the liner notes of the Electric Youth album:

• "In the '60s, young people were fighting to be heard. They were looking for peace and they wanted to change the world. Today, children are still struggling to voice their opinions. The song 'Electric Youth' is about treating young people like people and helping to develop their ideas and creativity."

Deborah explaining each song on Electric Youth:

Who Loves Ya Baby?

• "I originally wrote this song with Olivia Newton-John in mind because I knew she was working on a new album. Anyway, I ended up recording the song myself. It's basically a song about true friendship. At the end of the day, it's nice to know you have a friend who asks only one thing of you... to be yourself."

Lost In Your Eyes

• "I wrote this song a little over a year ago (fall '87). The song is pretty self-explanatory and straight-forward. It basically says that eyes can speak a language of their own."

Love In Disguise

• "Sometimes two people break up because they think it's time for a change. Then both people walk around, pretending everything is fine when, in fact, they want to get back together. I had the chorus/hook to this song lying around for months because I lost the verses. Anyway, I did new verses, found the old ones, and decided I liked the new ones much better anyway... So everything worked out for the best in the end."

Helplessly In Love

• "I wrote this song around the same time I wrote 'Lost In Your Eyes.' Again, this is a self-explanatory song about someone who is, you guessed it, helplessly in love. I would like to explain one line. 'I can't see clearly even though the sun's been lifted from my eyes.' I guess what I'm trying to say is that love blinds you when it's around, but still leaves you blinded/confused when it's gone."

Silence Speaks (A Thousand Words)

• "Shhhhh... Enough said."

Should've Been The One

• "I was considering this song for the first album, since the 'Out Of The Blue' project was so dance-oriented. I decided to hold off on recording this live-sounding track. The song itself is about that one person you always had your heart set on, but was unobtainable."

Electric Youth

• "When I was in elementary school, I participated in a program called 'WINGS' - Widening Interests Through New Experiences For Gifted Students. This program focused on developing children's creativity outside the regular curriculum. If you have children or simply remember what it was like to be a child, you realize how much energy a young person has and how many off-the-wall ideas only a child can come up with. 'Electric Youth' is about not dismissing a young person's ideas because 'he/she is just a kid.' I owe a lot to my family and teachers for helping to develop my creative side and for teaching me and many other children how to channel energy and ideas into worthwhile and creative projects."

No More Rhyme

• "This is a song about how the consistency of the 'rhythm' of a relationship will keep it going even though the substance or the 'rhyme' is gone. The line 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' is like waiting for the last note of a scale to be played or waiting for something to go wrong in a relationship because something is going almost too smoothly. Fred Zarr produced this song and I think that it is one of his strongest pieces of work to date."

Over The Wall

• "This is a song about looking for more than what is right in front of your eyes. The 'wall' can mean something different to everyone. 'Over The Wall' is about bettering yourself by taking chances and not limiting yourself to only what you are familiar with. I spent ages on this string arrangement. People often call this song 'Over The Edge,' 'Over The Water,' 'Off The Wall.' The meaning of the song is 'Over The Wall.' Got it?"

We Could Be Together

• "The message in 'We Could Be Together' is this: Although you may be secure with what you have, you may really have your heart set on something else. This song is about doing what you know in your heart is best for you, even if the world disagrees. Society has a set of standards that discourages people from dating people of different cliques or classes or colors or religions. Sometimes people have to make decisions in life that not everyone agrees with but you have to do what's best for you because you only live once."

Shades Of The Past

• "In this song, I'm having a conflict within myself. I want to make a decision about whether or not to continue in a relationship. I want things to be clear, either black or white, but love is grey."

From Newsday

• "I don't like the name Debbie. From the time I was five I was trying to get people to call me Deborah. Then, I thought, no: 'Debbie' is gonna flow more. But maybe someday, when I can do a more mature, serious record, I can do the 'Johnny Cougar to John Mellencamp' transition."

(about wanting to win a Grammy)

• "My dream was to win one and in a sense it still is, but I realize now that in the long run they really don't mean anything. It's like the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. It comes out and people talk about it for a week. It's a moment."

(about the movie Skirts)

• "I've been reading scripts for a year and a half, but nothing appealed to me. This film is very light-hearted. I don't want to do an intense first movie, that would be a mistake. The one thing I have going for me here is I can use a lot of myself in this role."

(about wanting to do a double album)

• "I could put together another album right now. I really wanna do a double album. I don't like it when an album has only eight songs. It should have at least ten, Eleven. Or twenty."

(about how she's treated socially)

• "When people socially talk to me like I'm an adult, I feel like saying, 'Hey, how old do you think I am?' People forget...but my mom never lets that barrier break. I say, 'Why can't I do this or go here,' and she'll say, 'Do you remember when your sisters were your age?' But I don't like to be talked to like I'm a baby."

(about Eddie Murphy being on Arsenio Hall)

• "What he said was great, cause people always say to me, 'What do you have to fall back on, what if it all ends tomorrow?' And he said what I say, which is that if you create something to fall back on, you're gonna fall back. I was, like, alright, Eddie!"

(about fans finding her old house in Merrick)

• "It got pretty bad in Merrick, what with having three sisters and living near the high school. I didn't mind that people would knock on the door. What I did mind was when it was eight on a Sunday morning and I'd gotten home at, like, five."

(about needing to have four wisdom teeth extracted)

• "I had to cut a promotion trip. It started the day of the Prince's Trust and I had to go to a dentist in Rome. When we saw that the dentist had a liquor cabinet next to his chair, we said, 'This can't be right, let's go home.'"

(about "writer's block")

• "If you analyze every 'if,' 'and' or 'but'...... Once I had a song idea, and I sat there for half an hour, trying to write it. Then I realized, 'This isn't working.'"

(about her friends from Calhoun High School)

• "My good friends have been loyal. It's mainly people who don't know me who have mixed reactions. I didn't walk around school telling people, 'Guess what I do after school. I go home and make demos.' Nobody really knew that, so you'd have to expect they'd think I was lucky."

(about why the Between The Lines book was written)

• "The only reason we did it was because of the unauthorized version. It would be egotistical, I fully agree. But if anyone was gonna summarize myself, I was. Actually, I do have a lot to write about. I've done more in eighteen years than a lot of people know."

From Smash Hits

Do you have any famous ancestors?

• "There's this guy called Vic Damone who was a singer many years ago. He's my great uncle through marriage. He did a song called 'My World Belongs to You' and I can't remember any of the others."

Have you ever had a nickname?

• "Well some people call me 'Debs' which is sort of a nickname I suppose. And my band, because I'm from Merrick they do this take off of the Flintstones- they call themselves The Gibstones from the town of Merrock and they call me Debbie Gibstone."

Have you ever been locked in your bedroom with a plate of cold cabbage?

• "No. But I do remember having to sit at the dinner table with this bowl of lentil soup untilI ate it all. I left it for ages and it got worse and worse the colder these letils got so I cheated a bit by feeding some to the mdog under the table. If I was really naughty my parents wouldn't send me to my room, they'd just give me a big long speech and I'd be feeling REALLY guilty by the end."

What's the most mischievous deed you ever committed as a nipper?

• "I don't know how naughty this is but I remember going on this class trip and they gave us free T-shirts - it was a helicopter trip. Anyway, I treated the whole class to candy and told my mum that I used the money she gave me to buy the T-shirt. I felt so guilty I couldn't get to sleep and I went down to her crying and admitted what I'd done. She said 'Oh that's okay; it's always better to tell the truth'."

Have you ever poked your grandad in the backside with a spear?

• "No, never. But when my mum was younger, she sometimes used to travel on the subway and my grandmother gave her a hatpin in case any old men got nasty with her. She used it once. But I can't say I've ever STUCK anyone with a hatpin. I don't think I've ever done anything really nasty to my grandparents, but I remember once when I was shopping with them in a department store I hid in a clothes rack for about 15 minutes and I was just peering out watching them looking all over for me. They were really scared."

Do you sometimes think it's a jungle out there?

• "DEFINITELY. Basically if you're not a tough person and you're really meek and don't speak up and stand up for yourself, you'll probably never be happy. I'd say I'm a tough person. I used to go off to auditions because that was the only way to get an 'appointment'. You have to be a bit pushy. If I knew they wanted someone with black hair, I'd go in and say 'If I get the role, I'll dye it'. It's called crashing auditions."

What's the secret of the universe?

• "How am I supposed to know? I would say the world is a playground and we're all little kids playing around and checking everything out. That's MY attitude in life anyway."

What's being in love like?

• "Well, I wouldn't know because I guess I haven't experienced that yet. It'll probably be bad and good because probably I'd have such little time and I'd want to be with the person as often as possible. I've seen some people who are in love who act really stupid and kind of float around all day. But I'm sure it'll be great and I'm sure I'll get a LOT of good songs out of it."

When was the last time you cried?

• "I haven't really cried in a while actually. I'm quite a happy person basically. My eyes kinda filled up when I saw E.T. and there's one part in DIRTY DANCING where Jennifer Grey's talking to her father and she starts to cry; that always brings tears to my eyes. I do want to get into films quite soon and something like Jennifer Grey's role in DIRTY DANCING would be ideal for me."

If you could be anyone else in the world, who would you be?

• "I'd probably like to be George Michael's hairdresser, then I could see how he gets his beard to look so good. It just looks TOO perfect..."

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