Every country has its own Kim. Ours can run and play tennis. The English one can sing and do the gardening. Because what do we read on Wikipedia? “Kim Wilde (born November 18 1960) is a British singer and gardener”.
Kim Wilde’s hair may have been a jungle from which no cat could retrieve its young, her private patch looks totally well organised these days. Kim’s convinced that green is necessary, a sentiment that grew in the nineties. When she had children, she wanted to create a healthy environment for them. And because the Ancienne Belgique wasn’t a smoke-free zone back then, she started studying horticulture – in England the best thing anyone can do. She hadn’t even finished her study when she started working in other people’s gardens for the BBC’s Garden Invaders. In 2005 Kim even competed in the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show. She won a gold medal in the category Courtyard Gardens – a category which is underestimated all too often it seems. Or are we writing nonsense now? It’s a fact that Kim has written two books about gardening. They look a bit odd in the record shelves of the fans, “but”, says Kim, “gardening gives me a lot of pleasure every day and it is a good change of environment from what I used to do. It’s at least as creative, exciting and inspiring as making music – and maybe even more.” Voltaire couldn’t have said it better himself, but he didn’t sell 7 million singles and 12 million albums. !Never say never Anyway. Kim said some years back that she would never return to the music business, and she has changed her mind. Never say never was the title of her first new album in over ten years. Kim is one of the eighties idols who have started a second career because a lot of people want to replace good memories with a jukebox live performance. A retro night in which everyone glances over the fact that we’ve all become older and we’ve all – to be quite honest – failed to hook up with a successful popstar of Kim’s caliber romantically. !Recycling Kim doesn’t need to do it for the money, because Wikipedia (using the biography on her official website) tells us that Kim is still England’s best selling female solo artist of all times. And if plants become more expensive she’s still got that gold medal from the Royal etcetera in her cupboard. In 2001 Kim participated in the eighties ‘Here & Now Tour’ together with Paul Young and Howard Jones, and in 2003 she had success with ‘Anyplace, anywhere, anytime’, a duet with German one hit wonder Nena. Then it went from bad to Never say never. Because if a fairly inspiration-free new version of ‘You came’ is the first single, you know what’s going on. The record also contains remakes of ‘Kids in America’ and ‘You keep me hangin’ on’. And that last song was already a cover of The Supremes. A new track is the most recent single ‘Perfect girl’. Speaking of which: because of all the compost Kim officially looks better than ever. You would think she’s a star from the late nineties. It’s obvious to you that we prefer the way she looked in the 1980’s. We look forward to Kim’s comeback in her own backyard. We hope she doesn’t use those yellow petunia’s again.