Songfacts®:

• "Only in My Dreams" was Debbie Gibson's first single. Like at least 100 other songs, she recorded a demo in her home studio that helped earn her a contract with Atlantic Records when she turned 16. Atlantic teamed her with producer Fred Zarr, who helped her polish the song into a hit.
• Gibson hadn't had a boyfriend yet, but that didn't stop her from writing songs as if she had already gone through the wringer of love, imagining what it would be like. In this song, she sings about a guy she can't get over; she sees herself with him, but it's only in her dreams.
• Gibson became really famous when this song took off, but her life wasn't all that glamorous. A junior in high school (public school: Calhoun High in Merrick, Long Island), she spent 3-4 nights every week performing at clubs, often flying back home for classes - she didn't have a tutor. By the time she graduated, the Out Of The Blue album had sold over two million copies and delivered three other big hits: the title track, "Shake Your Love," and the #1 "Foolish Beat." Her next album, Electric Youth, went to #1 in America and contained another #1 single, "Lost In Your Eyes." In the '90s, her music fell out of favor but she got her star turn on the stage, starring in a number of popular musicals.
• Directed by Simeon Soffer, the video alternates between color and black-and-white to delineate the dream sequences Gibson sings about. Her look resembles Madonna's highly accessorized early style, but more wholesome.
• With this song, Gibson became the first woman to write and produce her own Top 10 hit since Joni Mitchell did it with "Help Me" in 1974. When her song "Foolish Beat" hit the top spot in 1988, she became the first woman to write and produce her own #1.
• Gibson make custom versions of this song that she sent to radio stations around the country with the names of their disc jockeys inserted into the lyrics. This took a lot of splicing but was very effective - DJs were thrilled to play a song were they get a mention. These custom songs were big in the '80s - Huey Lewis did it with "The Heart of Rock & Roll," inserting the names of cities where the heart of rock and roll was still beating.