Date: 12 November 2002
Originally published in: Salzburg website (Austria)
Written by:
Pop-icon Kim Wilde with new single back in showbusiness.
“It is very funny, when a 42 year old twofold mother, who is busy with gardening, forces herself back into leather clothing and sings ‘Kids in America’. Kim Wilde, pop icon of the 1980’s, approaches her comeback with humour throughout. The British singer had herself talked into a revival tour, and now the single “Born to be Wild” is released. “I have no expectations. When the song is a hit, I will be happy. If not, I won’t be affected by it.”
“Cambodia”, “Chequered Love” and “View From A Bridge” were some of the songs, with which Kim Wilde had many hits as the sharpest competitor of Nena. “We have become good friends”, said Kim Wilde during a press conference in Vienna last week. In contrast to Nena she has turned herself away from showbusiness during the last few years. “My career had reached its lowest point”.
Kim Wilde got married, took on the name of her husband, got her hair back to its natural colour, gave birth to children and led a private life. Still she didn’t totally disappear from the public eye in her home country. She discovered her love of gardening, got her own tv show and became a gardening columnist of a newspaper. “And then I was offered a handsome sum to join an eighties show”, the singer laughs.
These days Wilde treats her pop career more loosely: “After each tour I think that it’s probably been the last now. Because people will have had enough of this eighties revival at some point. If not, I won’t have a problem with that.” Whether there will also be a new album, the singer is less clear: “I do not exclude it, but I don’t have any concrete plans. It is fun to be Kim Wilde again – and get paid for it. And my voice sounds much stronger now than it has even been.”
As for the new single, the artist takes it lightly: “Someone has the “glorious” idea to get Kim Wilde to sing ‘Born to be wild’ as theme song for the Deutschen Tourenwagen-Meisterschaft. Mad! I wasn’t totally convinced of the idea, nor of the song, which I never liked. But I could be persuaded to an attempt. Then the project got self-dynamics, the cover version has power and pleases me really well. It was never my intention of starting with the single a second career… “