Swapped spade and shovel for the microphone again

Twelve years after her last show in the Grossen Freiheit 36 Kim Wilde performs there again on March 6.

She was one of the pop icons of the eighties. Blonde like Madonna and Debbie Harry, but with her pouting lips sooner a childlike woman than an emancipated selfmade woman or rough punker. Kim Wilde was more shyly and more innocent than her musical competitors. She was certainly more protected, since she was working with her father and brother, when she was successful with songs like ‘Kids in America’, ‘Chequered love’, ‘Cambodia’ and the Motown-cover ‘You keep me hangin’ on’ and sold millions of singles. In the mid-90’s she said ‘adieu’ to the pop business, because she couldn’t reinvent herself like for instance Madonna. Now Kim Wilde is back again. With the respectable comeback-album ‘Never say never’, which by the way hasn’t been released in her British homeland, and a tour on the European continent with already sold out shows in Paris and Amsterdam. “I have no goal to achieve”, the 46 year old says, still a very attractive singer, “but singing has always given me lots of fun. Perhaps that is why I let me talk into a comeback.” The singer, who lives north of London, doesn’t need her comeback to the pop stages. The twofold mother is an accomplished book writer, who has written two best sellers about gardening. After leaving the pop business she picked up the spade and shovel and studied horticulture. At the renowned Chelsea Flower Show she won a gold medal in 2005 for her ‘Cumbrian Fellside Garden’. “That means more to me than any gold record”, she says.