Debbie Gibson on her turning point: ‘I felt like I was selling my soul’

In this series, Take 7, our favourite artists and thinkers get philosophical across the same seven pressing questions.

Debbie Gibson remembers three things from the last time she toured Australia 37 years ago in 1989.

“I remember holding a koala bear. I remember being presented with a gold record at the Hard Rock Cafe. And I remember the cute boys from Indecent Obsession. They opened for me and I dated David Dixon for a minute back in New York,” she says with a laugh.

At 55, the ’80s pop icon – who will tour Australia this August and September with Go West – barely looks a decade beyond her teen phenom days. In her home studio in Las Vegas, she keeps the era’s mementos nearby.

“My original Electric Youth sign is right here,” she says, swinging her laptop camera around to reveal the giant neon sign that graced the cover of her chart-topping 1989 album. “It’s normally plugged in, but when I’m doing interviews it makes me look a little green, like Elphaba vibes.”

1. Worst habit?I’m so messy. I cannot put things back where I found them, which is weird because I’m a Virgo. I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder, but I do have a lot of stuff. Fans give me gifts all the time on the road and I hate parting with them. I’m a dachshund mum, so I get a lot of dachshund-themed gifts. And because they’re also called “wiener dogs”, some of the gifts are a little wink-wink.

2. Greatest fear?I have this running joke with my voice teacher: sometimes when I’m singing, he’ll say: “Be a little more nonchalant.” It’s because I’m an over-singer, over-doer, over everything! We joke that I’m not nonchalant, I’m chalant. My biggest fear is becoming so nonchalant that I don’t care about things. I pride myself on being very invested in things I care about. I would never want to be walking around numb, dulled down, not present.

3. The line that has stayed with you?It’s by my songwriting hero, Billy Joel: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun.” I love the rebellion in that lyric. It’s a line about being fully alive.

I was never known to be a bad girl, but I have a mischievous side. I went to a gala last week where people were in gowns, and I was fixated on wearing this rock ‘n’ roll mini dress. That’s my rebellion against ageism and sexism.

I’ve always been the kind of girl who could hold my own doing whatever. I sang I Wanna Destroy You with the Circle Jerks at CBGB and I stage-dove head first. I didn’t realise it would have been a lot more economical to go backwards.

4. Biggest regret?I had a cat named Gleason, but I went thr