In the late 1980s, Tiffany used covers of "I Think We're Alone Now" and "I Saw Her Standing There" and incessant MTV exposure to become a chart-topping pop star.

It seems almost fitting, then, that when she returns to a big stage on NBC's summer series "Hit Me Baby One More Time," she'll be covering a song by a next-generation overnight pop star: original "American Idol" Kelly Clarkson.

Tiffany plans to sing Clarkson's song "Breakaway," along with "I Think We're Alone Now," on the show, which premieres Thursday (June 2). "Hit Me Baby," based on a British hit of the same name, puts five 1980s-era act on the same stage and has them perform one of their own hits and cover a current song. The studio audience will then vote on a winner, who will have a donation made in their name to a favorite charity.

"I love her as a vocalist. I think she's one of the best female vocalists we have right now," Tiffany says of Clarkson. "So if I was going to showcase my voice, that was the song I wanted to use."

"Hit Me Baby," which will run for three weeks, aims to tap into the nostalgia post-baby boomers have for their youth by bringing back bands who recorded some of the touchstone songs of the '80s and early '90s. Tiffany will be performing alongside A Flock of Seagulls, Arrested Development, CeCe Peniston and Loverboy; coming episodes will feature Vanilla Ice, Wang Chung, Sophie B. Hawkins, Cameo and the Knack, among others.

For host Vernon Kay (who also presented the British show), the warm feeling people have for '80s music comes down to one thing: fun.

"It was a fun decade," the 31-year-old Kay says. "I think maybe pop music wasn't as taken as seriously as it is now. ... From my experience back in the U.K., where I'm a radio DJ and play at universities -- the students, when they hear tracks like Tiffany's 'I Think We're Alone Now,' they just go crazy. And it's because they're fun songs."

Tiffany, now 33, understands that a good deal of '80s nostalgia is dipped in irony, and she fully expects that some will see her appearance on "Hit Me Baby" -- she also did the British show -- as a last-gasp effort to reclaim the spotlight. This despite the fact that she released a well-received (although hardly chart-topping) record called "The Color of Silence" a few years back and continues to record and tour.

"You can't fight it," she says of those perceptions. However, "in England it was really about performers of the past that have been successful, and we all love their music, coming together and celebrating their success and what they're currently doing -- nothing more, nothing less. I don't feel as artists that we have to come out and prove ourselves again."

Echoing Kay, she also says she had a great time on the British show and was eager to see some of the bands lined up for the American version.

"To be offered to come out and sing on a major TV show with people like Night Ranger and the Knack, people I grew up listening to, it was like, 'Yeah, okay,'" she says. "To go out and sing 'I Think We're Alone Now' and another song I currently love that's on the charts? Shoot yeah, why not?"