Kim Wilde

Kim Wilde (born Kim Smith on 18 November 1960 in Chiswick, UK) is one of the most successful pop stars of the 1980s. Daughter of Marty Wilde, a former rockabilly singer who had achieved a degree of fame in the late Fifties, she debuted at 21 with the single "Kids In America" (1981), co-written with her father and her brother Ricky, who would go on to pen many of her hits, while the instruments were played by prog-rock outfit Enid. "Kids In America" became a massive hit in the UK, as did her debut album, "Kim Wilde" (released on Rak Records), which came out in July 1981 and spent 14 weeks on the UK albums chart, peaking at number 3 and earning widespread acclaim, including from critics.

Her debut album fits perfectly into the context of the then-rampant new wave craze, with a sound very close to that of Tubeway Army, Skids, Stranglers and especially Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, the real blueprint for "Kids In America", whose main synth line openly borrows from their "Messages". Besides the bestselling singles (the others being "Water On Glass" and "Chequered Love" — their respective B-sides "Boys" and "Shane" are also worth a listen), standout tracks include "Tuning In Tuning On", the rebellious anthem "Young Heroes", "Our Town" (whose subject nods to Simon & Garfunkel's "My Little Town") and a couple of tracks with fun ska-reggae cadences ("2-6-5-8-0" and "Everything We Know") that earned Kim comparisons to Debbie Harry's Blondie.

"Select", released in 1982, is once again a family affair: this time father Marty and Ricky Wilde shift the focus decisively onto keyboards, making extensive use of Moog, Roland JP 8 and Yamaha CS80, while youthful exuberance gives way to more earnest lyrics. The result is a set of catchy yet lastingly impactful songs that combine cold electronic beats with warm vocal emotion, such as "Action City", the paranoid "Chaos At The Airport" (about fear of flying), "Words Fell Down" (with its Ultravox-style robotic phrasing) and the whirling "Ego", whose intro echoes that of "Key" by contemporaries Yellow Magic Orchestra.

"Can You Come Over" and "Wendy Sadd" can be seen as dry runs for ballad territory, but here too the main attractions are the 45s, namely "View From A Bridge" (the sad story of a girl who kills herself by jumping off a bridge after discovering her partner's betrayal) and the roughly seven-minute "Cambodia + Reprise", by far the brightest gem in her catalogue, which masterfully stages — both lyrically and musically — the anguish of a woman who loses her husband in war.

The themes turn less bleak on the third album, "Catch As Catch Can", released in autumn '83, which was intended to be her artistic-maturity record (with Gary Barnacle on sax) but failed to achieve the hoped-for results, despite containing plenty of creative ideas. The sonic palette widens further here, with solid electronic foundations gradually joined by swing-jazz brass — on the sinuous "Love Blonde" — and hi-NRG elements that act as a springboard towards the dance formula of years to come (the other two singles being "House Of Salome" and "Dancing In The Dark", the latter penned by the seasoned hitmaking duo Nicky Chinn/Paul Gurvitz and remastered for the 12-inch version by Chic's Nile Rodgers). The best material, however, lies buried deeper in the tracklist, which boasts the experimental "Shoot To Disable" and "Dream Sequence", the ballads "Stay Awhile" and "Can You Hear It" (the latter with a faint new age flavour) and the more conventional synth-pop of "Sparks", with its proud, driving groove à la A Flock Of Seagulls.

When the beautiful Chiswick blonde signed with Mca Records in 1984, many critics predicted a swift decline. They were wrong. The first album of this new phase, "Teases & Dares", came out in November 1984 and, while not a huge commercial success, managed to win over fans, thanks above all to its hit singles, chief among them the melodic pop of "Rage To Love", which became Wilde's first top-20 hit in two years.

In October 1986, Kim released a cover of a famous Supremes hit, "You Keep Me Hangin' On", and it was another massive success. The track reached number 2 in the UK and stayed on the singles chart for 14 weeks, but above all it topped the US chart. Kim thus became a superstar worldwide.

"Another Step" (her fifth studio album) was released in November 1986 and spent 5 weeks on the UK charts, buoyed by the title track (a duet with Junior) and "Say You Really Want Me".

But her biggest bestseller came in June 1988. "Close" would go on to spend 38 weeks on the UK albums chart, driven above all by three hits that pushed firmly into dance territory: "You Came", "Never Trust A Stranger" and "Four Letter Word". During this period Kim Wilde also performed as a support act on Michael Jackson's massive Bad tour.

Kim was at the peak of her success. A star whose only flaw in the Eighties was, paradoxically, that she never overplayed sex appeal or diva antics — something she, of all people, could truly have gotten away with. Every woman wanted to be like Kim Wilde, and every man wanted to be with Kim Wilde: tousled blonde hair, full red lips and a sultry gaze aimed straight at the camera.

Her subsequent albums, "Love Moves" from 1990 and "Love Is" from 1992, failed to match the success of "Close", though "Love Is" did produce another top-20 hit, "Love Is Holy", written by Rick Nowels.

In September 1993, MCA released the English artist's first official greatest hits album, titled “The Singles Collection 1981-1993”: it featured all her biggest hits from her RAK years, as well as her more recent MCA successes and two brand-new singles, “If I Can’t Have You” (a cover of the Yvonne Elliman classic written by the Bee Gees and included on the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever“) and “In My Life”, penned by Kim herself.

In 1995, Wilde's ninth studio album, “Now And Forever”, was released instead, suffering the consequences of almost nonexistent promotion, though it still managed to place two singles in the top 50 (“Breakin’ Away” and “This I Swear”).

In 1996, Kim recorded another cover, “Shame”, a reinterpretation of the disco song made famous by Evelyn “Champagne” King, but the track failed to take off.

In 2001, to mark the release of another greatest hits album, Kim put out a new song, “Loved”, written by Ronald and Masterton, known for their work with Dannii Minogue.

Relegated to the sidelines of the record market yet more than ever enshrined as an icon of the 80s, Kim has continued making music in recent years while also showing off her skills as a gardener. In 2003 she made a comeback with the track “Anyplace Anywhere Anytime”, a duet with Nena, the former star of the neue deutsche welle, Germany's new wave movement.

In 2006 she released a new studio album, featuring new tracks alongside remixes and remakes of classics such as “You Came”, “Cambodia” and “Kids In America”, while for “Never Say Never” she re-recorded “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” as a duet with Nena.

In 2018, she made waves again with the sparkling “Here Come The Aliens”, which brought her roaring back into the spotlight, inspired by some mysterious UFO sightings on her estate in Hertfordshire. There she spends most of her time now devoted more to her beloved gardening (she has written two books on the subject for the publisher Collins and even received a Gold Award from the Royal Horticultural Society) than to recording studios, where an eight-year-long silence since the previous “Come Out And Play” had only occasionally been broken by a covers album (“Snapshots”, 2011) and a handful of Christmas carols (“Wilde Winter Songbook”, 2013).

The sprawling greatest hits “Pop – Don't Stop”, put together in 2021, celebrates the fortieth anniversary of a career that, all things considered, has certainly seen more highs than lows, while two years later the new collection ”Love Blonde – The Rak Years 1981-1983” focuses exclusively on her early days, dusting off in full the first three albums recorded by the Chiswick-born popstar, namely the eponymous “Kim Wilde”, “Select” and “Catch As Catch Can”, all released on Mickie Most's RAK label and each expanded with a series of bonus tracks and outtakes.