Even the aliens are rocking

Pop icon Kim Wilde delivers a refreshing concert in the Große Freiheit Hamburg

Hamburg. “Wow, that’s so awesome here, I’ll stay with you. Someone else can go for a walk with the dogs!” Again and again, Kim Wilde’s tears of emotion are in her eyes at her acclaimed concert of the “Here Come the Aliens” tour in the Große Freiheit. No wonder, when the fans of the meanwhile 57-year-old celebrate the old hits as well as the almost completely presented new work. But this, with cracking guitars and dominating synthpop-playing ties in anyway to the early times of the 80s icon. Seamlessly, classics such as the mystical “View from a Bridge”, the anti-war new-wave from “Cambodia” or the driving “Chequered Love” add new titles such as “Birthday” or the Billy Idol-inspired Kandy Krush a homogeneous sound robe. Autotune effects, ethereal ballads and the “Cyber Nation War” presented in the new remix provide for acoustic surprises, the spacey leather look with gimmicks like alien masks and Xl-tinsel for eye-catchers. That by no means every note of the sympathetic blonde with the characteristic nasal voice always sits – so be it.

The freshly playing backing band includes two drummers and the proven family team of brother and songwriter Ricky on guitar and the wild whirling niece Scarlett. Since seeing strange lights in her garden in 2009, she believes in the existence of aliens, says Kim Wilde. “That influenced my life. But I’m not afraid of the aliens, but rather of humanity”, confesses the trained landscape gardener with a smile. After the career break in the mid-90s, the former “Bardot of Pop” had made a name for years as a TV gardener. The time as a young pop star, she tells the fourtysomething fans, was just a real “hardcore experience for a country girl” as they have been. Until the longing for the pop star life again outweighed. Standing on the stage, she would now enjoy much more than before, admits Wilde, whose father Marty already in the late 50s, the rockabilly scene in England stirred up.

Only once on the stage a little sand gets into the transmission of the pop machine. When Ricky Wilde’s guitar is not tuned during an acoustic session, the bullish bald man disappears silently behind the curtain for a few minutes, to the surprise of his sister. But soon the harmony is restored. Fireworks such as the Supremes cover “You keep me hanging on”, the “You Came” dedicated to true fans and the indispensable “Kids in America” make for a brilliant conclusion to a memorable concert.