Kim Wilde says aliens inspired her Pop Comeback
The irresistible success of Kids In America, Chequered Love and Cambodia threw the popular music press into disarray.
Still in thrall to punk, the NME and Melody Maker couldn’t work out what to make of this coiffed pop singer – the offspring of (in their view) the decidedly naff 60s pop star Marty Wilde, who happened to be co-writing all of her singles.
Reading those columns now (a Spanish fan site has helpfully archived them), it’s fun to watch writers torturing themselves for the simple sin of enjoying pop music
“How do you feel about it suddenly being hip to like Kim Wilde?” fretted style bible The Face.
Describing her debut album, the NME’s Paul Morley wrote “God knows why I like it,” then tied himself in knots trying to explain the appeal of “the girl next door to the girl next door” before ungraciously asking her, “Do you feel you’re a business toy?”.
“I spent a lot of time justifying myself back then,” laughs the singer, still looking glamorous as she sips a coffee in a central London hotel.
“That NME piece was terribly pretentious but it was saying, in a way, ‘OK, I give in. Pop music is here and you’re great at doing it, and we’re going to put you on the cover’.
“So I kind of won that battle.”
Having conquered the music snobs and colonised the music press, Wilde went on to score 20 Top 40 hits, shifting 30 million records and supporting David Bowie and Michael Jackson on tour.
But things fizzled out in the 1990s as younger, hungrier acts replaced her at the top of the charts.
“I’d been in it since I was 20, then I was 36 and everyone, I felt, was doing it a lot better than I was. They had the ambition that I didn’t have any more.
“When Madonna came along, I didn’t feel I could compete, so I said, ‘You know what? You’re best off being who you are, and that’s going to have to be enough’.
“Sometimes it was, and a lot of the time it wasn’t.”
In 1996, having lost her record deal, Wilde starred in a West End production of Tommy, where she fell in love with, and subsequently married, her co-star Hal Fowler.
Leaving showbusiness behind gave her a tremendous sense of freedom, she says. Then, while raising her kids, Wilde found a second career in horticulture – writing several books on gardening and presenting the BBC series Garden Invaders.
“I was always drawn to plants and nature,” says the star, whose pre-fame job was flower arranging in a garden centre. “It’s very healing, and very therapeutic and inspiring.”
Two chance events resurrected her music career.
In 2002, Nena (of 99 Red Balloons fame) asked Wilde to duet on her single Anyplace, Anytime, Anywhere, which became a huge hit in Holland, Germany and Austria.
Then in 2012, Wilde drunkenly serenaded commuters on her train home from a Magic FM Christmas Party, swaying around the carriage in a pair of comedy antlers.
Filmed by her fellow passengers, the clip went viral. Wilde was mortified, but it turned out the public were laughing with, not at, her giggly, warm-hearted performance.
As the views for the video rose, so did interest in her music. A year later, she released an album of Christmas covers and now she’s following that up with Here Come the Aliens, her first album of original songs since 1995.
Full of glam guitars and shimmering disco synths, it’s a big, fun pop record. A bit cheesy at times, but far from embarrassing – with Stereo Shot and the Billy Idol-inspired Kandy Krush the standout tracks.
But the album gets its title from a lyric in the opening track, 1969 – a Barbarella-style space romp that was inspired by Wilde’s close encounter with a UFO in 2009.
“It was a mind-blowing experience,” says the 57-year-old. “I still get really excited talking about it.”
Courtesy : BBC News
Photo : Daily Mirror
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