Kim Wilde: familiar pop and alien beings

The experienced English pop singer firmly believes in UFOs and the limitless power of pop music. On her latest album, “Here Come The Aliens,” Kim Wilde succeeds in reconciling both passions.

“Well, what else could it have been?” Kim Wilde exclaims, almost indignantly, when, at a meeting in a design hotel in central Berlin, someone gently asks whether it was really, definitely, and without a doubt a UFO that she saw in the evening sky back in 2009 with two friends. “The thing shone incredibly brightly, it was at least a hundred times the size of an airplane, and it moved in a zigzag pattern.” Any more questions? Yes. Naturally, the matter was never resolved. But in the village in Hertfordshire near London where 57-year-old Wilde lives with her husband and their newly fledgling children, whispers about the mysterious celestial object still linger today.

Wilde was eight when the first men landed on the moon, and she and her father spent weeks rebuilding the Apollo rocket, which then sat on the dining table for years. And so the extraterrestrial theme forms the central theme of her first album with new songs since 2010. “1969” fantasizes about a visitation by aliens—not necessarily a super-friendly one, since we’ve been doing quite a lot of damage to the planet. The final ballad, “Rosetta,” celebrates the space probe of the same name, and the album cover itself looks like an alien B-movie poster from the 1950s.

But fortunately, the singer, who was one of the planet’s leading pop stars from the 1980s onwards before marrying, having children, taking a ten-year break, becoming a popular TV gardener in England, and celebrating a magnificent comeback in 2006, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, doesn’t have her head entirely in the clouds. She has created truly tangible, gripping, timeless pop in collaboration with her brother Ricky, with whom she has always written her songs. For example, there’s a song about sex called “Kandy Krush,” which is also about her own husband, Hal Fowler. “My husband still turns me on,” Wilde shares, “which may also have something to do with the fact that he’s ten years younger than me.”

You can very, very easily imagine this woman at a fun ladies’ night at the local pub. But Kim Wilde also handles serious topics credibly. In “Cyber. Nation. War,” she speaks out vehemently against cyberbullying, and “Solstice,” reminiscent of “Four Letter Word,” is an incredibly sad yet beautiful ballad based on a true story about two teenage suicides on Midsummer’s Eve in her region. “As a mother, this news broke my heart.”

The fact that Kim Wilde, who regularly takes part in eighties nostalgia tours in the UK, pays homage to the decade of her greatest chart successes on “Here Come The Aliens” is a strong part of the album’s concept. She has a reference in mind for each of the new songs, such as Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Gary Numan, and Elvis Costello. “I bow to my great idols and feel gratitude and pride when I think about my career,” she says. “I don’t want to be immodest, but I really had a lot of good songs.” With her new single, “Pop Don’t Stop,” Wilde’s most chart-worthy song in a long time, she might finally achieve a radio hit again. “I would like to make a strong statement about this phase of my career,” says Kim Wilde. “For me, the power of melodies and the warmth of words never go out of style. And I’m certainly not thinking about stopping. I’ve been passionate about music since I was little. It never stops.” Except maybe when the aliens come and take us away.