Date: 23 October 1982
Originally published in: Sounds (UK)
Written by: Philip Hackman
Remember when it began? Some grinning blob (Bates? Travis?) gushing ‘And our next guests have just flown in from New York to be here on Top Of The Pops!!’
This ‘Kim Wilde’ cant started there, setting the pattern for petty falsehood and cumbersome deceit – New York? Just the other side of Welwyn Garden, right? – which comes to a mouldy finish on stage in a half-empty Civic Hall.
‘Kim Wilde’: Ricky, Mickey and Marty and Kim – one big happy ‘family’. abuse of parental power and influence, I call it.
‘Kim Wilde’: a business concern ‘concerned’ only with the grubby rustle of pound notes. You wanna t-shirt, kid? A calendar? A program? A badge, then?
Kim once said in an interview that she just loved signing and would happily work sessions or back-up to (someone like) Joe Cocker… she seemed like a nice person. I could believe her, but I could never, ever believe in ‘Kim Wilde’ – a blundering carthorse trampling over anything this young girl might really have to offer. Saddled with lyrics a lobotomised pinhead would sneer at, arrangements as bouncey and vivacious as a lead pancake, is it any wonder Kim looks lost and confused – sad, even?
Tucked firmly into ‘Kim Wilde’, she has good reason to seem unsure and unconvinced. None of these words are from her[!] heart. I just [!]bet she’d rather be at home playing with her sister or out having a drink with her mates. Instead, she has to figurehead this ‘Kim Wilde’ monstrosity, play out the pin-up popstar she so obviously isn’t meant to be, become the living embodiment of the small-boy fantasy that her ‘business’ buddies have worked so hard to create.
Maybe once, briefly, ‘Kim Wilde’ was a cheeky conceit with some small charm. Camouflaged by all the other jolly young sweeties around at the time, the run of singles fitted in – only because no-one bothered looking too closely. But there had to be LPs, didn’t there? Two, so far; rotten-mouthed collections of second-hand youth anthems, cynicism-corroded spluttered of ‘adolescent angst’ cobbled together by people who were adolescent before you and I were born. Doesn’t it leave a nasty taste in your mouth?
This tour is twelve months too late. Whatever ‘Kim Wilde’ meant, it should now be rolled up and filed away, along with the posters, the badges, and the Fan Club membership cards. It should, at least, preserve some dignity.
