Body Mind Soul

Debbie Gibson

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 19, 1993)
• Original Release Date: 1993
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Atlantic / Wea
• ASIN: B000008FZZ
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #45,646 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debbie Gibson's artistic pinnacle., February 18, 2005

By	D. Mok (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Body Mind Soul signalled the end of Debbie Gibson's chart life, but it's not the music's fault. This record was one of the casualties of the paradigm shift that had turned New Kids on the Block fans into Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and even Pantera fans -- a generation had started to grow up, and Gibson's music was left behind.

But this is one fine record. Even when I was a teenager back in 1993, this record sat in comfortably in my CD walkman along with Pearl Jam's Vs., R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People, and other songs by far more "respectable" artists. And this is the record on which Gibson didn't sound like a talented teenager, but a fully formed artist with depth and complexity. She'd just done an overhaul in her music, choosing new collaborators (Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken, of Rythm Syndicate, which had one big hit in "P.A.S.S.I.O.N.") and a new, more grown-up image. Rythm Syndicate wasn't exactly the most respected band around, but Rogers and Sturken proved highly catalytic to Gibson as co-writers and co-producers.

Lead single "Losin' Myself" was possibly the sexiest single of that year. Maybe it wasn't a great idea for Gibson to play a stripper in the video, but the single is still a marvel, an engaging mix of dance song and ballad, a track that just keeps building up higher and higher rhythmically, with great backing vocals, a killer bassline, a bridge that Prince might've cooked up, and a varied, sensual lead vocal by Gibson. "Free Me" melds a heavy club beat to a great pop song and effectively caps off Gibson's artistic intent; "Do You Have It in Your Heart?" signals Gibson's new approach towards ballads. She now sounds fully mature and this song easily makes us forget the overt sentimentality of "Lost in Your Eyes"; and "How Can This Be?" harkens back to her older songs, but with more maturity and better lyrics. The only dud is "Shock Your Mama", which does nothing of the sort, pretty flat and uninteresting even as a joke.

This album fell into bargain bins about a year after it came out. But it's easily the strongest album in the Gibson catalogue, better than Gibson's plethora of semi-independent albums throughout the '90s, and a record that would be good by anybody's standards.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid album , January 31, 2005

A Kid's Review

It's beyond me why some people choose to judge this immesely talented recording artist! There are not many people who have her skills & ability to create various songs and fabulous backing music! This album is everything a solid album should have. The songs are expertly written & produced, the vocals suit each song, there is consistency, the songs have good remixablity potenial & everything song sounds fabulous many years later! In my mind, she is every bit as talented & has good taste in music like Madonna. I love every songs on this CD. Recommended.

4.0 out of 5 stars Growing Pains, June 17, 2009

By	Gregor von Kallahann - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

A while back I wrote a review of Debbie Gibson's ELECTRIC YOUTH which actually garnered a few favorable votes and a comment or two from people who were fans back in her heyday. Of course, being a fan in Debbie's heyday probably meant you were a highschooler in the late '80s. I wasn't (by any stretch), but I WAS a high school teacher, and I remembered sneaking references to contemporary pop culture into my foreign language classes in an attempt to make French or German more "relevant" to the kids. Sometimes it worked. Asking students who they preferred--Debbie or Tiffany--played well in some classes (freshman level mostly), but it was always a big mistake to pose the same question to the Guns'n'Roses crowd.

Well, it took me a few decades to actually listen to Debbie Gibson (and I still haven't quite gotten around to Tiffany), but I did find ELECTRIC YOUTH on sale for ninety-nine cents one day and had to sample it. And it was, well, it was pretty good for someone so young (17 at the time, as I recall). It was an oddly earnest effort. This was lite teen-oriented pop, but you could sense that Debbie was someone who took music seriously and was in there trying her level best to do something with a little quality.

So now I find this later effort in the public library and decide, hey, let's see what she was up to as a young adult in the early 90s. Not surprisingly, the earnestness is still there. She's in there pitching, as my dad would have put it. And she came out with a fairly polished, verrry 90s album. A little slick, a little more polished and grown-up, not quite urbane but kind of urban (reflective of the times, I guess). All those multi-tracked vocals, suggestive more of TLC or En Vogue, show that she was eager to move beyond any white bread image from her teenybopper days.

Gibson is one of the few recording artists who actually labels the sections of each song on her lyric sheets. I find it almost touching. "Verse...chorus...bridge." Sort of announcing to the world, "Hey, I know something about MUSIC. I know how to construct a 'well-made song.' I'm not just an empty headed teen idol." And it's true: she exhibits craftsmanship throughout. True originality is a bit harder to come by, but it's a sincere effort and I give her a "B+" at the very least.

Lyrically or vocally, though, Debbie Gibson was not doing much that was truly distinctive at this point in her career. She has a pleasant enough voice, but not one that makes you stand up and listen! You don't necessarily say, "Who IS that?" Nor do you say, "Wow! That's definitely Debbie. I'd know her voice anywhere."

Of course, this was 17 years ago, and whole new generations of teen idols have come and gone and tried--valiantly or desperately--to extend their careers into young adulthood and beyond. You could say Debbie's done better than most. At 38, she is--I understand--still in there pitchin'. That's something. She may have even found her voice in the meantime.

That'd be somethin' too.