Date: 1 January 1990
Originally published in: Smash Hits (UK)
Written by: Colin Irwin
Kimmy Wilde is one of pop’s more welcome survivors. She recognises the importance of froth and glamour and the need to keep people guessing without ever becoming aloof or taking herself too seriously. In short she understands pop music. Madonna she ain’t, but she’s consistently made the best of what she’s got.
Until, perhaps, now. Accepting your own limitations is one thing, but underselling yourself is quite another. Her recent single ‘It’s here’ was so characterless you might have assumed its release was merely some ghastly aberration – but its blandness turns out sadly to be indicative of an album disappointingly lacking in punch or purpose of any kind.
She sings well enough, but that lovely cutting edge is blunted by a featherweight production and unimaginative material which render Kim herself totally anonymous. She has co-writte all 10 tracks herself, but a few of them do her anything like justice. There are better songs on the LP than ‘It’s here’ (there could hardly be worse!) and the best of them are ‘Time’ (singalongable in a Belinda Carlisle sort of way); ‘In Hollywood’ (which features some heavy guitar and a Madonnaesque sense of drama); and ‘I can’t say goodbye’ (on which, aided and abetted by Jaki Graham, she has a fair old stab at some soul).
But in the annals of Wilde history, they barely merit a footnote. A shame.