Debbie Gibson

For the uninitiated: Debbie Gibson is still the youngest female to write, produce, and perform a #1 single, with "Foolish Beat" at age 17. I think I was just learning how to make toast at that age. She wrote all the songs on her debut album Out of the Blue—at age 16. The album had four singles in the US top five and sold more than five million albums. Gibson's second album Electric Youth was the #1 album in the US for five weeks. It contains three singles in the top 20, including the #1 song "Lost in Your Eyes." With that song, Gibson came home from school, started playing the piano, and the song just poured out in real time. "I wrote it in ten minutes and never changed a note," she told me. "I have no idea where it came from."