Kim Wilde: “I felt tired of my past”

Kim Wilde emphasizes the importance of her new album, because ‘it’s the 30th year of my career and I am 50 this year’.

Vienna – Kim Wilde is one of the pop icons of the 80s. The now 49-year-old British woman landed in 1981 with their first single, ‘Kids In America’, a worldwide hit, others followed. After a decade, the London native started a second career after the Millennium start-up. After the remix album ‘Never Say Never’ (2006), today, Friday, comes ‘Come Out And Play’ (Sony), her eleventh album. ‘I’m 50 this year and it was really important for me to make a fabulous album,’ says Wilde in conversation with the APA in Vienna.

“I’m a little electric guitar freak”

For “Come Out And Play” Wilde used a good force once again, namely, her brother Ricky Wilde as producer: ‘Ricky and I worked together since the beginning of my career in 1981 when he wrote ‘Kids In America’ for me.’ Wilde stressed how important this album was because ‘it is the 30th year of my career and I am 50 this year.’ There are 13 songs on the album, some hard, guitar-up-tempo numbers, such as the first single, ‘Lights Down Low’. ‘Yes, I’m a little guitar freak and have always loved electric guitars,’ says Wilde when the surprising hardness of the album is addressed.

‘The first song I wrote for the album is called ‘King of the World’, which is a little about this too. I grew up in a house full of guitars, my father had them everywhere and now my son Harry also plays guitar.’ And even on the album, because the twelve year old contributes the guitar riff for the song ‘This paranoia’. ‘We wanted to make an album that brings me into the 21st century in a very rockoriented style. Nevertheless, it is still pop and still has strong melodies,’ says Wilde about her artistic ambitions.

Nena and comeback with “Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime”

For the successful second coming of her career it was a German colleague who wanted Kim to work with her on an English cover version of ‘Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann’. ‘Nena asked me at the time if I would join her, and I felt at the time as if I had to pull myself back into the spotlight. Previously I had for years a very private life in which I have raised my children. It was very sudden for me to come into the sunlight for me, as from a dark room’, recalls Wilde. In 2003 they had a hit single with ‘Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime’.

“Had enough of the old hits”

And so Wilde went back to the stage: ‘I came back to the music, toured with Human League, ABC and Heaven 17 on revival tours and I began to enjoy it again. The best moment was for me to see how the audience after all these years, was still happy about the songs of that time. That was what really encouraged me.’ There were times when she had tired of her old hits: ‘I felt I was often tired from my past, when I was 36 from the music industry and as ‘Kids in America’ was 15 years old. I thought I would never sing that song again, and I remember when I said that my mother that she looked at me then, as if I had gone mad.’

In the music business itself Wilde has again settled: ‘Now this is again a familiar area for me when I conduct interviews, or standing on the stage – and I enjoy it.’ A gig with Kim Wilde will do early next year in this country: ‘In February and March I will also go on tour, including in Austria,’ announces the singing blonde. (APA)