We went back to the 80s on Friday at Haus Auensee – with a grandiose concert by British pop singer Kim Wilde.
Leipzig. There are concerts whose attendance is associated with a certain risk: that of disenchantment, when admiration for a former music icon could be shattered by the reality of the present. When it turns out that not much is left of the glory of the old days. A risk that is all the greater the longer it has been since the artist married.
Kim Wilde’s commercial and creative success was a good three decades ago – even if the Brit never stopped making music. Now she is 61, a new album is to go into production soon, before that there is a greatest hits tour that took her to Haus Auensee on Friday. A good 1,500 fans dared to take the risk – and were not disappointed.
Enthusiasm even without the big hits
A step through the hall doors on this evening is like a journey through time: deep into the 80s, into the decade that marked the zenith of pop music, in which Kim Wilde began her musical career and celebrated her greatest successes. Relevant hits like “Cambodia”, “View From a Bridge” or the The Supremes cover “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” only come at the end of such concerts, but Wilde succeeds in entertaining the fans even before that with lesser-known pieces only to inspire, but to euphoria.
She does that with 80s power pop à la “Never Trust a Stranger” or “Water on Glass”, with her Nena cover “Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime”, with bedroom tearjerkers like “Love is Holy” and “Four Letter Word” – but above all with irrepressible energy and desire, which also infect the audience.
Two family members on stage
How much fun Wilde is having at this concert is clear to everyone in the hall after half a dozen songs at the latest. The same applies to the band, which is large with two drums, two guitars, a bass, a keyboard and a background voice, is powerful from start to finish and provides the finest 80s vibes: high tempo on the drums, pointed E -Guitar solos and distinctive, sometimes extensive, sometimes staccato-like synths won’t let you stand still. Halfway through the little more than one and a half hours, the audience applauds so loudly that others only hear it at the end.
Even the star of the evening seems overwhelmed: reverent, almost bashful, Kim Wilde absorbs the enthusiasm of her fans. This applies to a singer who still sounds like she did at the time of her great successes: with this characteristic soprano that carries the raw youthful energy of a pop-rock rebel. Wilde’s voice has lost a bit of volume in the high registers, but her niece Scarlett (one of two family members on stage along with brother Ricky on guitar) irons that out in the background position.
In the final hit thunderstorm block there is finally no holding back, the light show pulsates in all colors, the entire hall knows the refrains, “You Came” and “Kids in America” let the 80s come alive one last glorious time before it fades away outside, back to the present. “How fantastic,” said Wilde at the beginning of the show – two words that sum up the evening well.
