Gibson’s Maturing ‘Youth’ : Pop Stars : **** Great Balls of Fire : *** Good Vibrations : ** Maybe Baby : * Running on Empty

DEBBIE GIBSON

“Electric Youth.” Atlantic ***

For her debut album, “Out of the Blue,” Debbie Gibson swiped a cookie cutter from Madonna’s dance-pop pantry and wound up rolling in dough. Gibson’s trifle went triple platinum and turned her into a teen-age star rivaled only by that other suburban girl-next-door, Tiffany. But with “Electric Youth,” Gibson, now 18, leaves juvenilia behind and takes a giant step toward becoming a pop craftswoman.

Gibson still is no original: A good deal of “Electric Youth” fits into secure niches that the likes of Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle already have found quite cozy and lucrative. But the Long Islander, who writes and co-produces her own songs, wields formulas with enough zest to make most of the tracks on “Electric Youth” sound fresh for a song’s-length moment. Far from the thin-voiced, one-note singer she was on her first album, Gibson comes off as a confident performer willing to take vocal chances and try on a wide range of styles.

At her best, Gibson shows a healthy affinity for the past. “Who Loves Ya Baby?” and “Shades of the Past” display a crooning, belting high register that sounds like Michael Jackson in his Jackson 5 days. Echoes of the Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together” resonate in the fetching love-note, “We Could Be Together,” while “Silence Speaks” appropriates delicate touches from Renaissance chamber music.

Instead of repeating the bland love cliches of her first album, Gibson sings from the authentic, if naive, point of view of a teen-ager impatient to find out what love and life have in store. Her outlook is appealing: forthright, optimistic, hungry for experience. While it is too soon to tell whether Gibson can grow into an adult artist capable of writing and singing in her own distinctive voice, “Electric Youth” finds her putting away the cookie cutter and turning out the productive tracings of a serious and promising apprentice.