Sending the kids Wilde

As Kim Wilde releases her 15th studio album, Casey Cooper-Fiske and Naomi Clarke look back to where it all began.

Her dad was rock’n’roll icon Marty Wilde and her home was full of his discs, so naturally a teenage Kim Wilde wanted to make it in the record industry. Just selling them, not topping the charts. But it wasn’t to be. The 20-yearold was suddenly thrust into the limelight in 1981 as her debut single Kids in America stormed to number two in the UK singles chart. It was pipped to the number one spot by Shakin’ Stevens’ Green Door, despite selling more than half a million copies in the UK alone in its first eight weeks of release. But it hadn’t been the route Kim had originally planned.

As a teenager, Kim had been looking for work while Kids in America was being written by her dad Marty and brother Ricky. With her house packed with her dad’s vinyl collection, she reckoned she’d be good at working in a record shop. She’d even got a job interview in Hertford lined up.

“But Kids in America charted and scuppered my plans. I was all set to have my dream job and it got snatched away from me by a hit record,” she says. And what a hit it was. Written using a WASP synthesizer, it was heavily influenced by the synth-pop style of Eighties chart-toppers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Gary Numan. Marty came up with the lyrics just before the song was recorded. He’d seen a TV programme featuring American teenagers and had been inspired by their single-minded attitudes. The lyrics – with their famous “Whoah-oh” catchline – resonated throughout the world, charting in the top 10 in much of Europe as well as in Australia and New Zealand. It hit the top 40 in Canada and the US.

Now at the age of 64, Brit Awardwinning Kim is proud of the way her younger self handled fame, even if she did allow herself a few indulgences.

“I became a pop star very young, and I was thrown into the heart of it, but most of that was wonderful,” says Kim of those early days. “It was meeting lots of great people, meeting all my idols, travelling all over the world, having a lot of success, and the opportunities that it brought, I mean they were all great gifts, and I recognise them for that. Of course, I did get caught out with a few bad habits, especially with alcohol, I think over those years, it was just a mainstay of most events after a gig, before a gig, at a party or anything. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just I took a decision for abstinence for a while. And noticing how well I felt during that abstinence, it was a Stoptober thing, just before I stopped alcohol, and I felt so alive and so healthy, and a lot of small health ailments seemed to disappear, and I thought, this can’t be a coincidence. So I thought I’ll just keep going and so nine years later, and I’m feeling very much better, I know, now, than had I not made that decision. But I had a lot of fun during those days, I don’t regret much, I’m really proud I never got into drugs at all, ever, not remotely. I think that could have really destroyed me.”

She credits the likes of The Pretenders’ singer Chrissie Hynde, Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry and the late Kirsty Maccoll for inspiring her when starting out, saying the latter had “a big influence on me as a songwriter”, adding that she knew the singer and liked her “very much”. Kim has scored eight UK top 10 singles throughout her career, including Chequered Love, You Keep Me Hangin’ On and You Came, and has also achieved two UK top 10 albums in her self-titled debut and Close.

She prompted hilarity when she teamed up with late Not The Nine O’ Clock News star Mel Smith to record a cover of Brenda Lee’s festive track Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree in 1987, with the record reaching number three in the UK singles chart.

The Chiswick-born singer, who praises modern artists such as Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, says there had always been strong women in music since she began, but there needs to be more female representation in executive positions in the industry, saying the situation “hasn’t changed as much as it could”.

She says: “You do have to stand strong against executives, whether they’re male or female, or male or female artists. People in positions of power sometimes don’t handle it very well, and you have to be very wary and stand your ground, because you have what they want, more than they have what you want.”

Since her breakthrough single, Kim has even turned her hand to gardening, winning a gold award at the Chelsea Flower Show for her courtyard garden in 2005.

But music has always been her first love and she recently released her 15th studio album, Closer, and is currently touring the UK to promote the record, which is inspired by her 1988 LP Close. And says she has been “amazed” by “outstanding” reviews for her latest record.

She continues: “That has been a really wonderful thing to have at this stage in my career, to be 64 and have an album that’s been received so positively and enjoyed, and the fact that we had so much joy making it, and now performing it live. “It’s just been a phenomenal phase of my life, that’s kind of come out of quite a lot going on in my personal life in the last few years. And then to have something so positive come out of something, I wouldn’t say difficult, but there were some challenging things going on in my life in the last few years, and then to have this thing of beauty emerge out of it, it’s phoenix-like. It’s a wonderful thing, I’ve got a wonderful gift, I’m really looking forward to sharing it with everyone live, because that’s where it’s really going to come together. I’ve got this amazing band, and we’re just itching to get out there and present these new songs alongside the old ones, and all the old hits.”

Kim Wilde begins a European tour on April 25 in Dublin, before dates that include summer shows in the UK. See kimwilde.com for details.