Debbie Gibson
and
Tiffany
were often compared to one another in the late 1980s, and in 1990, there was even more reason to compare them when both singers tried to shed their teeny-bopper images and record more mature, less sugary albums. While
turned to new jack swing and urban contemporary with unconvincing and weak results on
New Inside
,
Gibson
had a bit more artistic success mining the dance-pop waters on
Anything Is Possible
-- but only a bit. Though some of the material is fairly decent (including
"Another Brick Fall"
and the
Madonna
-ish
"It Must've Been My Boy"
), most of it is pedestrian, homogenized and quite forgettable. And as the thin-voiced Long Islander approached 20, the fact remained that she didn't have a great range by any means. ~ Alex Henderson