Date: 18 October 2018
Originally published in: Schwäbisches Tagblatt (Germany)
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She is blonde and beautiful. She is a landscape gardener, author and presenter. But above all, the woman has given the 40- to 55-year-olds some of her most beautiful accompanying hymns for young people: the Englishwoman Kim Wilde.
Stuttgart. The instant hits “Kids In America” and “Cambodia” were created in 1981/82 by their father Marty and brother Ricky, who wrote the 1987 number one hit “You Keep Me Hangin ‘On” by the Supremes from 1988 onwards but she also songs herself, such as “You Came” from her most successful album “Close”.
At the beginning she toured slowly. After 14 albums and 37 years of experience in the limelight, among other things as a support act for David Bowie and Michael Jackson, she apparently has the stage fear under control – even if she started the concerts with the new UFO sighting-inspired “Here Come The Aliens’ album with futuristic sunglasses for a fringe leather outfit.
On Tuesday in Stuttgart, the 57-year-old, who was already paid homage to by Dave Grohl with a cover version and illustrator Marjane Satrapi in her comic “Persepolis”, was in good shape, talkative and in good voice despite the cold. As in 2011, her “little brother” Marty was on the guitar with her, her niece Scarlett, who was lovingly introduced as a “little troublemaker” as background singer, and five other long-standing and new musicians. Among them two drummers, after all, the sound of the wave popper has become rockier in the course of her career.
In the theater house, however, those pieces sank into a difficult-to-tolerate sound porridge. The highlight in addition to the great hits of the early 80s, which the aged audience longed for, was the acoustic block with “Hey Mr. Heartache” and “Four Letter Word” presented as Wilde-trio as well as a brand new industrial remix of “Cyber Nation War”.
