Kim Wilde could have been on a Hyde Park soapbox for all the subtlety she put into her singing last week. Standing on stage and clashing a couple of saucepans together couldn’t be much less harmonious than the unattractive shouting she directed at her London audience.
Her voice appeared to have been torn to ribbons, the result, I will charitably assume, of a long and gruelling tour. To make matters worse she had to do battle with a distinctly ropey sound system, which revealed nothing of what her two female singers were doing – pumping petrol perhaps by the look of them – and blurred the decisive edge of Gary Barnacle’s saxophone.
Kim seems to have progressed little from the gutsy street-wise image which first rocketed her into the charts. A cliched “Hello London” and some giggly introductions were the naive extent of her rapport, with the audience, who sat around like stuffed dummies, until a cut from her first album “26580” cued them in for a simulated stage ambush.
Even the undoubted charms of her sultry bottle blonde good looks had on this occasion the limited appeal of a blow-up doll. It is disappointing that Kim Wilde appears unable to reproduce live the direct pop appeal of her singles. Producer Micky Most did a magnificent job with her, but if she is to move into the mainstream, almost MOR, market, she will have to get her live act together before taking it on the road.