Date: 4 August 1983
Originally published in: Smash Hits (UK)
Written by: Tim de Lisle
It’s been a long time since we heard from Kim Wilde. Nine months, to be exact. Last autumn she did a British tour and released “Child come away”, which wasn’t madly successful. In fact like all Kim’s singles it did less well than the one before. Sometimes it doesn’t do a young artist a lot of godo to have a big hit with their first single, as Kim did with “Kids in America”. There’s some truth in the old cliche about it being harder to stay at the top than it is to get there. But Kim’s downward trend should be smartly reversed by the new single “Love blonde” which so impressed Deborah Steels in last issue’s ‘Singles’.
So where has she been? “Well, I took a month off to recover after the tour. Then we started on the new album, with Dad and Ricky writing the songs as usual, and ejust felt we needed to take time over the third one. Also we were trying to come up with a single to put us back in the charts and for a while we were all trying a bit too hard.”
The new Kim seems much like the old one, only a lot brighter for the break. “I’m really glad I had it ’cause I got lot of things sorted out in my life which I’d been neglecting badly. At a personal level it was the best thing that could have happened to me. And careerwise it might have the same effect… there is such a thing as overkill. You can get taken for granted.”
The jazzy, old-fashioned ring to “Love Blonde” doesn’t herald a major change of style. “It’s not typical of the album. Like the other LP’s it’s a collection of songs, not a concept or anything. We’ve jus ttaken the best of what we’ve done.”
The album comes out in late September. Meanwhile Kim’s been doing her bit for Britain’s exports. “I sold a million in France with ‘Cambodia’. And the Scandinavian countries like me. And I’m very big in Belgium.”
At this she giggles heartily, as if Belgium was a particularly amusing place to be big in, and it seems high time the interview was brought to a close.
