Teases & Dares

Released on 12 November 1984, ‘Teases & Dares’ is Kim Wilde’s fourth studio album. After signing to MCA Records in the summer of 1984, this was her first album for that label.

Music

Ricky and Marty Wilde wrote eight out of ten tracks from the album. Kim co-wrote ‘Thought It Was Goodbye’ with them and also contributed two self-penned tracks, ‘Fit In’ and ‘Shangri-La’.
The music was still very synth-based, but occasionally relied more on a traditional rock backing, such as on the tracks ‘Rage to Love’ and ‘Janine’.

Tracks

This album contains the tracks The Touch, Is It Over, Suburbs of Moscow, Fit In, Rage to Love, The Second Time, Bladerunner, Janine, Shangri-La, Thought It Was Goodbye.

Artwork

The sleeve artwork, designed by XL design featured a new Kim Wilde, fit into an image often compared with the comic strip and film character Barbarella. Kim has commented that this image worked well at first but soon became a drag.
The photography was done by John Shaw.

Formats

‘Teases & dares’ was originally released on LP and tape. The album was released on cd in 1985.
The German pressing of the cd is notable for its apparent ‘cd rot’: towards the end of the fourth track you can see a miniscule hole in the disc. So far, there have been no reports that this affects play of the disc.
See also this page in the discography.

Credits

Lead guitars, backing vocals: Steve Byrd
Percussion: Andy Duncan
Drums: Chris North
Fender jazz bass: Gary Twigg
Yamaha DX7, Solina, Mini moog, lead vocals: Kim Wilde
Guitars, Roland Jupiter 8, Solina, Mini Moog, Synclavier II, Yamaha DX7, computer programming, backing vocals: Ricki Wilde
Produced by Ricki and Marty Wilde, except ‘Fit in’ produced by Kim, Ricki and Marty Wilde.
Engineer: Nigel Mills with thanks to Stephen Stewart-Short and Pete Schwier.
Recorded and mixed at Select Sound Studios, Knebworth.

Kim about ‘Teases & dares’

Can you give an example of something going wrong?
There are many! I’ll confine myself to the sleeve of my previous album. We started working with a creative group of people. A very freaky video had been made and during the filming some photographs were made as well. It looked beautiful, strange and wild. Then I got back from travelling abroad and one of these strange photographs were placed on the sleeve of the album. It didn’t fit the atmosphere of the album at all. I went to the responsible person in a fit of anger. You know what you get to hear then? ‘It’s tough Kim. You either approve of this photograph or we delay the release for three months.’ Well, what to do then? But although I like a good sleeve and presentation, such a failure isn’t the end of the world. But in the future I will be more attentive. (1)

‘Teases & dares’ is a line from Fit in. It was chosen as the title, because it seemed to relate vaguely to what pop music is all about, teasing & daring. I also think it sounds good!

Chart performance

Germany: 22 (23 weeks)
Netherlands: 31 (5 weeks)
Sweden: 35 (10 weeks)
Switzerland: 10 (9 weeks)
United Kingdom: 66 (2 weeks)
USA: 84 (10 weeks)

Interview source

(1) The big Kim Wilde interview: ‘Too much has gone wrong, that won’t happen to me again’, Hitkrant (Netherlands) & Joepie (Belgium), 18 June 1988