30 January 1988
Maybe it was a natural swing of the pendulum away from the decade’s MTV glamour. Perhaps the relatable everyday drama of ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was an influence only now coming to market. Whatever the reasons, 1988 sees a surge of teen-next-door pop stars: sensibly dressed, not trying to be sexy, so down to earth they were almost six feet under. Britain’s leading late-’80s juvenile sweatshop will soon start topping the Irish charts, having surprisingly failed to do so in 1987. First, though, an actual American teenager.
Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ hit really big in early 1988, almost despite itself. The cheap video, where Tiffany makes spirit-sapping public appearances in identikit mid-western US shopping malls, seems like a warning to wannabes: watch out kids, this is the crushing reality of being a pop star! Tiffany herself throws the requisite pop-star shapes for onlooking shoppers, but if she were to slip into the crowd you’d be hard pressed to pick her out. And the track is a simple disco-fied bop that could have come from any Casio keyboard.
There’s an equally valid counter-argument, at least on our side of the Atlantic: in 1988 all this was exotic and distant to us. Shopping malls! Self-confidence! Americans! Luckily I had no American cousins; if any of this had shown up on my Irish doorstep in 1988 I would have crumpled with inadequacy. Also, ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ had already been a minor hit a couple of times in the US for various groups, so it was a proven earworm. And its strongest card of all is Tiffany, who sings this as a rock song, thereby giving depth and character to the tinny synth sound. She’s particularly good at catching the nuances of the lyrics. Her sly “we gotta hide what we’re doin'” and raw “try’na get away into the night!” are a reminder that even the squeakiest-clean kid-next-door is hopped up on pop music’s most powerful and intoxicating substance: teenage hormones.
Tiffany certainly caught a prevailing wind in 1988; we’ll actually see her again at the top of the Irish charts a few months later, so she’s no one-hit wonder. By that time, though, the UK and Irish pop landscape will look dramatically different, not least because of a brand new pop star—another kid next door in more ways than one—who would surpass everyone’s initial estimations.
