One person’s view: “Her vocals are solid on this track. But that is about it.” – Rocknroll1987 @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view: 2.28 / 5.00, in the bottom 25% of #1 hits from 1988
In 1987, Debbie Gibson was crowned America’s Favorite Wholesome White Teenager after defeating Donny Osmond in hand-to-hand combat and wresting away the title he had held since 1971. But very soon there would be a challenger to the throne. The 16-year-old Tiffany was lauded for her powerful, mature voice, and she benefited from a clever promotional push consisting of concerts at shopping malls. For younger readers, shopping malls are those large vacant buildings that say ”Sears” in faded letters on one side. Sears was the place that smelled like tires that you would walk through to get to the part of the mall where people bought things.
Tiffany went to #1 with her first hit, a remake of the ‘60s song “I Think We’re Alone Now”, but that wasn’t enough. The public didn’t want just breakfast at Tiffany’s – they wanted lunch and dinner too. Her second hit, “Could’ve Been”, also topped the Hot 100. Meanwhile, Debbie Gibson was poking around the #3 and #4 positions on the chart like the crusty 17-year-old fuddy-duddy that she was.
It’s easy to understand why “Could’ve Been” was such a success, because it is a somber ballad about a lost love. People have basked in this type of song for millennia. Whenever a caveman was stomped by a woolly mammoth, his cavewoman would grunt out a melodic sigh of mourning and the other cavewomen would gather around to listen. Despite the scarcity of woolly mammoths in the 1980s, emotional end-of-romance dirges were just as popular as ever. Sadly, “Could’ve Been” has not stood the test of time as well as many of these other ‘80s ballads. It is our task to figure out why.
One factor is Tiffany herself, through no fault of her own. “Could’ve Been” suggests a certain level of maturity on the part of the singer, as it describes painfully splitting up with the man who she had expected to spend eternity with. Tiffany was only 14 when she recorded the track, and its sentiment sounds naïve when coming from a person of that age. That kid who’s in your geometry class could’ve been your lover for every day of your life? Really? She was probably going to lose interest in him in a couple weeks anyway, after he wore a jacket that made him look like a dork and two of her friends laughed at him. Tiffany tried her best to convince us of the intense emotional trauma of the break-up, but there wasn’t a whole lot of authenticity to the effort.
The production and engineering on the Tiffany LP are also vulnerable to criticism. There was a period in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s in which many people in the music industry stopped giving a hoot about how their products would sound on a home or car stereo. Maybe they assumed that everyone was listening on cassettes that were just going to get stretched out or chewed up in a few weeks anyway. I get the impression that Tiffany’s producer/manager, George Tobin, was more than happy to help usher in this trend. He was an experienced studio guy but also a sharp businessman who focused on the bottom line. He could probably record an entire album for $52 and still have cab fare to get his singer to her next shopping mall appearance.
Tobin recycled most of the instrumental portions of “Could’ve Been” from an old demo recording session with the song’s writer, Lois Blaisch. This gives it a cheap and dated ambience, but the real disappointment on Tiffany’s debut album was the failure to fully emphasize the power in her voice. She is in a constant battle with her backing musicians and is usually losing. On the opening track, “Should’ve Been Me”, the sax player is so eager to play his part that I envision him physically shoving Tiffany away from the mike. Tobin had a talented singer and a collection of decent songs, but when I hear this album I mainly think of what could’ve been and should’ve been.
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