It just dawned on me that Britney Spears, recording artist, is fast closing in on "lifetime achievement award" status where the entire jewelry-rattling part of the industry will soon begin lining up to kiss her ample backside, every news network on the planet will fall in line, and those of us who see thru this Disneyland charade will contemplate going the Van Gogh route.
Meanwhile Debbie Gibson, recording artist who not only wrote her own songs, but performed and produced them as well, is left to pursue Britney's rightful career as a faded starlet is left to play Mother Nature in a casino and suffer through "Dancing With The Stars".
Had Gibson come along ten years later or so, it is entirely possible that, like Spears, she would have never gone away either. She'd have merely turned to the same song doctors as everyone else and kept on keeping on.
The reason she didn't, I suspect, is because she wasn't about to let some tin-eared executive in the high tower pat her on the rump and tell her to give these Desmond Child songs a listen because they're going on your next album.
Now that I think about it, why didn't Gibson go the Diane Warren route after the industry deemed her washed up? Just because the pop fluff radio programmers and MTV dickheads turned their back on her doesn't erase the fact that she's twice the songwriter Warren, Linda Perry, and the Matrix are combined.
Richard Marx went that route, writing with every boy band and failed boy band and reunited boy band in the land while his own star status was on the wane, and now he's enjoying his rightful comeback (and the affections of a seemingly ageless Daisy Fuentes)
If you're pushing forty and still screaming your lungs out at New Kids concerts, you know what "comeback" I'm talking about, but let's not pretend there wasn't a nasty fifteen-year lull in the relationship when you couldn't even give your Donnie Walhberg posters away at a garage sale.
So where's Debbie's comeback, and, no, "Dancing With The Stars" wasn't it.