Earworms: Only In My Dreams by Debbie Gibson

I sure never came up with anything this great when I was 16

Debbie Gibson was 16 years old when she got signed to a development deal with Atlantic Records on the basis of this song, which by spring of 1987 reached the number 4 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She went on to have four top ten hits from her debut album, Out of the Blue, all with songs she wrote during the time her first single was rising up the chart. She sold over 3 million copies of the album, mostly to teenage girls who had some extra cash as Madonna didn’t release any new records between June of 1986 and March, 1989.

Madonna had set the template for what Gibson was doing – writing songs which spoke of teenage concerns with a club-heavy synthesized rhythm track but which were smack dab in the traditions of pop songs with verse, chorus, bridge, and hooks galore. Gibson, being twelve years younger than Madonna, didn’t have her complexity, but made up for it with a direct, open-hearted way of singing pop. They each were great at coming up with melodies that cried out to be sung along with (or turned into karaoke anthems some time in the future).

I wasn’t the target audience for “Only in My Dreams,” but my roommate and bandmate at the time, Mike Stuvland, clued me in to notice the impeccable melodic basis of this song. The whole song, aside from the intro and instrumental bridge, contains just three chords, all of which I could actually play with my limited guitar knowledge. Three chords and the pop truth of confusion between fantasy and history in regards to love! I couldn’t resist!

The first ten seconds call us to the dance floor. There’s a weird percussive opening, then the congos lock in with a heavy disco drum beat, interjected with an electronic clap and leading to a double time fill. As the synth bass scrolls through the chord changes, Gibson chants “Oh, oh, oh” a time or four, and we’re set up for that aching first verse. “Every time I’m telling secrets,” she glides. “I remember how it used to be.” The way she lets the notes of “to be-ee” fall brings a feeling of saudade that is often overlooked when considering this as a party song. “And I realize how much I miss you,” chiming up at the end of that line; “And I realize how it feels to be free.” That word “free” is almost like a sigh. Gibson was the one who left her lover. She wanted freedom, and freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell once put it about a different subject when Gibson was a baby.

The percussion is percolating along, the synth-bass is prominent, there are light synth chords for emphasis in the background, and Gibson keeps singing. “Now I see I’m up to no good,” she sings, and a chorus echoes, “No, no, no.” “And I want to start again.” A glimmer of hope. “Cant’ remember when I felt good / No I can’t remember when.” How can we help but feel sorry for this girl who made a mistake, who dropped the best thing she had. At age 16, the “can’t remember when” part could possibly refer to only a week or two, but that doesn’t make the hurt any better. She’s convinced me, even while I want to dance, that she wants to return to those happy days.

Ah, but the chorus. First off, the tune, built on the exact same chord progression, is exhilarating. “No,” she states. “It was only in my dreams.” The synthesizer is pumping a counter tune, and she confuses the past with what she wanted to happen. “As real as it may seem / It was only in my dreams.” This is the genius of this song. To what is the pronoun “it” referring? Was the love in her dreams, and it never happened at all? Was the break-up in her dreams, and she’s still in the spot she wants to be? Or is it the hope that she could possibly get back to where she once belonged that is the dream? Gibson gives no clue in the way she sings. She’s earnest, no matter what, but there is still the mixed emotions of possibility, fantasy, and reality.

Okay, so the next two verses make mince-meat of my reading of the song, and pretty directly let us know that she misses her ex, and really wishes she could get a second chance to do it right. I love the increased use of backing vocals here to comment on her concerns. “Couldn’t see how much I missed you,” she sings. “No, no, no,” they answer. “Couldn’t see how much it meant / Now I see my world tumbling down,” she sings. “Tumbling down my world,” they reply. Her last line of that verse, “Now I see the road is bent,” is one I usually prefer to ignore. In my dreams, she found a stronger rhyme for the word “meant” that didn’t introduce a new metaphor out of left field.

The fourth verse solidifies her desire. “If I only once could hold you / And remember how it used to be / If only I could scold you / And forget how it feels to be free.” Here, I love the rhyme of “hold” and “scold” because it presents such a clear unrealistic approach to her imagination. She left her lover, remember, not the other way around. She wanted to be free. So, scolding the other person isn’t likely to return us to the status quo ante bellum. But, damn, that melody is so irresistible, maybe it might work.

No, of course not. Here comes that dazzling chorus again. “No, it was only in my dreams / As real as it may seem / It was only in my dreams.” Maybe the dream is just the desire to dress down the ex and return the love to its original state. I don’t really know. I prefer to keep the ambiguity I had in the first two verses, but it doesn’t matter. Either way, the sadness is still there, the attempt to sing herself out of her funk remains, and that high-eighties dance track keeps bubbling.

Hey, I know what might cheer her up? How about a tenor saxophone solo that vaguely reminds me of Junior Walker? This requires a key change and a different chord progression. We’re in a dreamlike state, a time for emotional release in a style not particularly contemporary in 1987. I assume this part was brought in by the producer of the record, one Fred Zarr, who had worked on Madonna’s debut album, and also co-wrote a Village People album, Sex Over the Phone, I’ve never even seen despite nearly 40 years working in used record stores. I like the sax a lot. It helps make the record stand out. Gibson returns to the chorus a few times, with the backing singers helping her, and we’re left to wonder if this beautiful record was real itself as it fades out.

I was asked to portray Debbie Gibson a couple times in Christmas pageants put on by the St. Louis bands the Boo Rays and The Sun Sawed in ½. (That’s me in the photo above.) Both times, I got to sing this song. I always took it seriously even as I knew we were making fun of the idea teen pop itself. I also sang it in a one-off band, the Cronies, that turned it into a ten minute medley with “Hey Jude” and “Sympathy For the Devil.” That was a ridiculous amount of fun. My love for this song has never wavered.