It didn’t begin with Mama Ok.
Most individuals consider Kris Jenner because the OG momager savvily guiding the careers of daughters Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, in addition to Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
However Diane Gibson — mom of late ‘80s teen pop sensation Debbie Gibson — had the Kardashian/Jenner matriarch beat by a few a long time.
“You know, my late, great mom, Diane, was really the original music momager,” the “Only in My Dreams” singer solely informed The Submit on the purple carpet of final week’s Songwriters Corridor of Fame induction ceremony.
Years later, different momagers would make like mama bears pushing and defending their showbiz children, from Brandy’s mother (Sonja Norwood) to Lindsay Lohan’s mom (Dina) and Miley Cyrus’ mother (Tish) to Selena Gomez’s mom (Mandy Teefey).
Diane, who handed away in 2022, was the drive behind taking her daughter Debbie, now 54, to history-making heights along with her 1987 debut album “Out of the Blue,” launched simply earlier than her seventeenth birthday.
Along with “Only in My Dreams,” the LP featured the hits “Shake Your Love,” “Out of the Blue” and “Foolish Beat.” When the latter topped the charts, it made Gibson the youngest feminine artist ever to write down and produce a No. 1 single — a report that also stands.
It was her mom who fought for Gibson to have the inventive management to try this. “I remember my mom pounding her fist in the conference room on that,” she stated.
“And she’s like, ‘Well, listen to the demo. Deb has a vision. She’s the only person who should produce this record,’” Gibson informed The Submit in 2022.
Gibson seemed again on how she and her mother made a pioneering pair within the male-dominated music business as she labored on her upcoming memoir, “Eternally Electric: The Message in My Music,” which will likely be launched on Sept. 9.
“I really speak a lot about that male-dominated music world we were in together,” stated Gibson, who wrote all the songs on “Out of the Blue.”
“Yeah, I mean, it was a party trick to kick those doors down … and to convince the label. They believed pretty early on in my writing, Atlantic, but I’m a producer too.”
Along with producing “Foolish Beat” all by herself, Gibson co-produced three different tracks on her debut LP.
It has been “therapeutic” for Gibson to relive and mirror on the early days of her profession whereas writing her memoir.
Now she is glad to see the progress that has been made within the music business “to have someone like Gracie Abrams here today [at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where she received the Hal David Starlight Award] in this landscape that is, you know, wide open now for young female songwriters.”
And Gibson was serious about her mother — and the momager strikes she made within the face of male doubters — on the Songwriters Corridor of Fame induction.
“To be the mother manager, there was such a stigma attached to that, and she knew that she had to know 10 times more than any of the men knew to be taken seriously,” Gibson informed The Submit in 2022.
It’s a mother-daughter legacy that Gibson upholds at the moment: “She and I started that together, and it’s still going on.”
