March 1989: Debbie Gibson Finds #1 on the Hot 100 with LOST IN YOUR EYES

At the dawn of 1989, teenage pop singer Debbie Gibson was having a moment. Her debut album, Out of the Blue (1987) had been a breakout success, reaching #7 on the Billboard 200 and spinning off a string of hit singles, including "Foolish Beat," which hit #1 on the Hot 100 for the week of June 25, 1988.

When it came time to launch her second album campaign, Gibson released the tender piano ballad, "Lost In Your Eyes," on January 6, 1989. It was the lead single for Electric Youth, released later that same month on January 24, 1989. "Lost In Your Eyes" spent nineteen weeks on the Hot 100 chart, peaking at #1 for the week of March 4, 1989. It held the top spot for three weeks in a row. Unlike most other young pop stars of the late 1980s, "Lost In Your Eyes" was written and produced by Gibson herself.

"I just really wanted the piano to be the main focus because I think if you have a strong song, you should let it speak for itself and not overproduce it," is how the artist characterized the song in Billboard Book Of No. 1 Hits, written by Fred Bronson.

"Lost In Your Eyes" was a song that Debbie Gibson had written long before Electric Youth; the singer performed the then-unreleased song on her Out of the Blue tour in 1988: "From the opening two bars of the piano intro, it elicited screams from audiences," she told Billboard in 2014. "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" still stands as Debbie Gibson's biggest pop hit of her career, one that's deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of millions of fans around the world.

"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 said to 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!"

FUN FACT: When Debbie Gibson's "Foolish Beat" topped the Billboard Hot 100 on June 25, 1988, it made her the youngest person to write, produce, and perform a number-one single entirely on her own, at age 17.