Debra Gussin

"You have a big mouth, why don’t you become a lawyer?”
That was the career advice given to 12-year-old Debra Gussin by her mother.
But, Debra set a different bar. “At 12, I discovered a passion for music. When my mom took me to my first Broadway musical, "Pippin," and my sister took me to my first Barry Manilow concert, the music took me to another universe altogether.”
Though life would lead Debra on a journey through television, music was always along for the ride.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in the suburbs of Long Island, Debra earned a dual Bachelors Degree in Television Production and Marketing Management from Syracuse University.
After working on a feature film, she landed at ABC’s Wide World of Sports. In the fall of 1987, when the NYC Marathon telecast was being planned, Debra suggested asking Barry Manilow to participate in the show.
“The majority of the marathon was run through Brooklyn, and Barry’s from Brooklyn, so it made perfect sense to me!”
As luck would have it, Manilow was working on a new album, and had just written the song "Brooklyn Blues." Debra flew to Los Angeles with a director to shoot a music video with Barry for the Marathon telecast. When his album came out a few months later, the song was released as a single, and the video lived a second life on VH-1.
Debra continued her television career in L.A., working her way up the ladder on numerous programs and genres, from daytime to primetime, cable to network.
While working on the launch of the National Geographic Channel, one of Debra’s colleagues introduced her to Manilow’s longtime lyricist, Marty Panzer. That life-changing moment unexpectedly launched her into the wide world of songwriting.
“I enrolled in Marty’s Master Class for lyric writing at UCLA Extension. I didn’t know the first thing about writing lyrics, and there I was in a Master Class with all of these experienced songwriters.
I just kept listening to Marty, studying his words, and with his guidance, I wrote a great lyric. From that point on, I was hooked.”
When the semester ended, Marty encouraged Debra to continue writing. A year later she took his class again, and won the first Concord Records & Barry Manilow Scholarship for Writing Lyrics that Succeed and Endure.
After winning two more scholarships, Debra was honored with the first and only Lifetime Barry Manilow Scholarship Award in 2006.
“I would not be writing one word if not for Marty Panzer. He’s at the heart of every lyric I write. On the music side, composer Don Grady is the soul. When Don wrote the music to my first song, he turned me from a lyricist into a songwriter. There was no turning back.
I’m so privileged to have the support of these two inspiring talents. They are equally gifted at being human, and I am blessed that they believe in me the way they do.”
Marty and Don’s participation in the Academy for New Musical Theatre benefit,"And Then I Wrote," at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, served as Debra’s introduction to writing for musicals. It wasn’t long before she enrolled in the workshop.
In the middle of her first year at ANMT, Debra took a sabbatical from her 20-year television career, and left the “Dr. Phil” show to focus on songwriting full time.
Last year, Barry Manilow visited Panzer’s class, and reviewed one of Debra’s lyrics.
“After a lifetime of listening to Barry’s music, it was a real thrill to have a conversation with him about a lyric that I wrote, and an even bigger thrill that he reacted so positively to the song.”
Debra was one of only five people at the ASCAP Expo to be selected for a one-on-one meeting with Academy Award-winning songwriter, Paul Williams. His generous enthusiasm for her lyrics encouraged her even further.
In 2007, Debra was named Suggested Artist by Song of the Year, reached the Top 12 at the Lyric Writer Awards, and was a Semi-Finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest, Pop category. Her song, "Our Love Will Never End," a duet written with Don Grady, recently won First Place in the Unisong International Songwriting Contest, Broadway/Cabaret category, beating out over 350 entries worldwide.
Debra is currently working with Grady on BOOMER, a collection of songs written for and about the baby boomer generation. BOOMER will be released this summer.
In July & August, THE DEPENDENTS, a short musical for which Debra wrote the lyrics, will be produced Off-Broadway as part of the International Cringe Festival in New York.
Debra is proud to serve on the Board of Directors of the Academy for New Musical Theatre. While continuing to write songs for the wide world of pop, she is also writing lyrics for the full-length musical, "Payola," a rock ‘n roll musical set in the late ‘50’s.
“One of the reasons I became a songwriter, and not a lawyer, is that law is about 'right and wrong,’ ‘black and white.’ Songwriting is about all the shades in between. I like shades.”