At the end of the fifties, when the British attempted to get to grips with the rock 'n' roll phenomenon, the singer Marty Wilde was at the forefront of the homegrown movement. At the start of the seventies, when the British were enamored with all things Osmond, Wilde's son Ricky was launched as a domestic equivalent to Donny. When the eighties commenced and there were few solo female pop singers, Wilde's daughter Kim took her place in the family business. Signed by pop mogul and grumpy seventies-TV talent-show judge Mickie Most—everything you like or loathe about Simon Cowell originated with him—Kim Wilde saw instant success with her debut single, "Kids in America." More than a decade's worth of hits predominantly written by her father and brother followed, but her success was on a song-by-song basis: Five years elapsed between "Kids" entering the U.S. charts and her version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" climbing to number one. She didn't have a die-hard following, she didn't have a signature sound, but as far as new wave women are concerned, Kim Wilde was one of the first and lasted the longest.
JB: Kim Wilde was a sullen, pouting British Bardot with a thin, inexpressive voice and a back catalog that is criminally easy to underestimate. "Kids in America" was as much a rarity upon its release as it is today: a crunchingly simple, super-poppy, three-minute single that sounds on first hearing like you've known it all your life. The Ramones could have done that song, Katy Perry could have done that song—but neither could have done it better than Kim Wilde did. And not just because she did it with an English accent. It was the way she sounded like she was just a little too cool, like she was doing the listener a favor. And she was! Especially in the final bridge, when she gave voice to the deathless couplet "New York to East California / There's a new wave comin' I warn you." The first line is geographically baffling, while the second accurately predicted the turn that American music was about to take.
LM: "Kids in America" is the 1982 version of "Smells like Teen Spirit" and "We Are Young": an adolescent anthem that encapsulated what it was like to be coming of age at a certain time. However, while Kurt Cobain pinpointed the apathy of Generation X, and Fun.'s "Let's set the night on fire" chorus is a sarcastic call-to-arms for overachieving millennials, Wilde's message was earnest and innocent: "Everybody live for the music-go-round." We didn't know about irony back then; we didn't have detachment or distance. We were all about fun (without the period). These days, Ferris Bueller wouldn't be cutting school; he'd be trying to raise seed money for his hot new app.
KIM WILDE: When I was about seven or eight years old, I used to watch Top of the Pops on a Thursday night, and that was my world. I remember making a deal with myself that one day I would be on it. Yes, my dad was one of the first rock stars ever [in the U.K.], but I'd already made a firm decision about my life.
My parents were only 20 when they had me. Rules didn't exist that much in our house. We were like kids growing up together, sharing each other's jeans and T-shirts. My dad had the most awesome collection of vinyl, and we had unlimited access to that.
I loved everything that was happening with punk, but I was just as happy listening to Kraftwerk as I was listening to the Sex Pistols, ABBA, and the Clash. I knew that my life was wrapped up with music one way or another, and even though it felt a bit slow to start, especially when I found myself leaving school and going to art college, I had this really strong sense of my own destiny. I'd done some backing vocals on my dad's stuff, and I'd been on the road with him. And I'd done backing vocals on a lot of the Ricky Wilde stuff. But really, deep down, what I wanted to do was get in a band. I remember going to London and seeing a band called the Mo-Dettes. I became a bit friendly with them, and I used to think that seemed the most fun: hanging out with a bunch of girls you love and making pop music.
Ricky had written some songs and had interest from Mickie Most at RAK Records. One day he was meeting with Ricky and I marched into the studio looking like a pop star. I remember making a special effort that day—my hair looked particularly spiky. I was already dying it and cutting it myself at art college. My tutor said it was the most creative thing I'd done while I was there. I went down the King's Road and bought myself some punky new wave trousers and a shirt. Things happened very quickly after that. Mickie asked Ricky who I was and started making noises to him that a couple of producers, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, might do some stuff with me. Ricky thought, Sod that. If anyone's going to be doing something with Kim, it's going to be me. He went home that weekend and wrote "Kids in America."
He had the Wasp synthesizer in his bedroom. It was quite a new thing—we're talking about the dark days of technology, pre-Walkman, pre-cellphones. I don't know how he got his hands on this bit of kit, but the pulse inspired "Kids in America." Rick was a big Human League fan. He was the sound maker, and I was the one lending the vocals and the blonde hair.
A lot of people would give me shit for "Kids in America": "What are you singing about—you're not from America." I don't know that it matters that much. I loved the attitude of the song. Do you really always have to directly identify with the lyrics of a song? I didn't think so. I always thought it had something special about it that transcended having it make any sense that a girl from a village in Hertfordshire in the English countryside was singing it. Besides, I liked that it wound people up so much.
It went in the charts on its own steam and the BPI [British Phonographic Institute] or whoever put the charts together pulled it out. They thought it had been hyped [that the record company illegally purchased copies]. There was a lot of hyping that used to go on in those days, and they hadn't put it past Mickie that he might do that to his fledgling artist. So they had to reinstate the song. Mickie would come in every day and tell us the sales figures: 30,000, then 40,000, then 50,000, then 60,000 people were going out every day and buying it. Before we knew it, we sold over a million copies. At the time, I had no way of computing what that actually meant. I had nothing to compare it to, and it was irrelevant to me anyway. I wasn't interested in units and figures and business. All I cared about was the fact that I was going to be on Top of the Pops for a few Thursday nights.
When it was a hit in America, they were like, "Why 'East California'? Why not all the way over to the west? Why miss out on that whole section of California that's not mentioned in the song?" And I said, "Well, they already got it. The people from the west side have already got it. We just had to bring it over to the east." I was finding myself trying to come up with any excuse as to why my dad might have written "to East California," and if you ask him, quite disarmingly, he'll just say, "'Cause it sounded better." If I'm honest, I didn't give too much thought to any of the lyrics. I was lost in this fantasy world that my dad had invited me into. I love how pop music can be completely nonsensical like that.
Musically, I found it really hard to put myself where I thought I should be. I loved too many different kinds of music. I really did struggle, and I think it shows in the early parts of my career. I look a little like I'm not sure where I should be, and it's true: I didn't know. By the time Ricky and my dad had started writing in earnest, I was far, far away. I was 20 years old living in airports all over the world with barely time to think about any aspect of my life other than making sure I didn't miss a flight. I barely saw them except to record. I figured my dad had a songwriting pedigree, so I just let them get on with it. I loved what they were coming up with for me, and even when I wasn't sure, I still went for it wholeheartedly. I played my part, but not in the creative process, putting songs together. It took me quite a few years to start thinking about becoming a songwriter myself.
I was always a bit of a tomgirl at school, a jeans and T-shirts girl. While the others were wearing eyeliner and miniskirts and platforms, I was the girl with the flared jeans and no makeup. As I became more of a woman, I felt more confident and sexy in photographs. They were absolutely tame compared to what's happening now, but that suited me. I liked that I could look pretty in pictures, but my main thing was I loved singing. Image always had a backseat for me, and sometimes I got it really spectacularly right—although most of the time that would be totally by accident—and then a lot of times I'd get it spectacularly wrong. There have been times in my career when I wish I'd been a bit more stylish. I wish I could have pulled it off and had all the top designers clamoring for my attention and begging me to wear their clothes. But they never did, and now I'm really glad I never got consumed by that.
MIXTAPE: 5 More Songs by British Women 1. "Just What I Always Wanted," Mari Wilson 2. "It's a Mystery," Toyah 3. "Weak in the Presence of Beauty," Alison Moyet 4. "They Don't Know," Kirsty MacColl 5. "Eighth Day," Hazel O'Connor
Sometimes a career is driven very much by an artist and their ambitions. A really good example of that is Madonna. We both had a great start, but she had that ambition. I don't think I had that kind of voracious appetite. Had I had that, maybe I could have kept the momentum going a bit more. It was not for want of trying. Rick and Marty were always trying to come up with a hit record—that was the holy grail of each waking day. But all the aspects of creating an image and hype? I didn't have that energy to put into my career. It wasn't coming from me, and as a result, I didn't seem to attract that kind of input from anyone else.
THAT WAS THEN
BUT THIS IS NOW
Kim Wilde continued to have European hits into the nineties. She ended her recording career to marry actor Hal Fowler and raise a family. She appeared in Tommy on the West End stage before going full-force into horticulture and becoming a celebrated TV gardener, presenting makeover shows for the BBC and Channel 4. Wilde then returned to music in 2001, joining various eighties revival tours. In 2003, she recorded the genuinely great "Anyplace Anywhere Anytime," a duet with fellow new waver Nena that went on to be a Top 10 hit across Europe. (Just because we call this one "genuinely great" doesn't mean we don't think similarly highly of other eighties acts' contemporary recordings. We just don't say it.) She is still signed to Sony Germany and continues to tour and record new material.
"Kids in America" resurfaced in 1995 when the Muffs recorded it as the theme to Clueless. Subsequently, it's been performed by One Direction on the U.K. X- Factor and recorded by acts as diverse as Tiffany, Cascada, Atomic Kitten, and James Last. ("Don't forget Lawnmower Deth," Wilde says. "They did a death metal version.") The song got a further lease on life in Christmas 2012 when a YouTube clip of a sozzled Wilde wearing reindeer antlers and serenading baffled London subway commuters with a boozy rendition racked up more than 2 million views.
WILDE: My career was tough to deal with at times. It became a roller-coaster ride, and I'd been on the ride for long enough. I'd recorded an album for MCA, and there was not a lot of enthusiasm for it from them or anyone else. So I decided to leap before I was pushed. I found myself getting one of the lead roles in Tommy. I thought that was a perfect halfway house between where I'd been and where I needed to go. Also, I couldn't bear the thought of traveling anymore. My whole life had been spent living out of a suitcase. Then I met my husband, Hal, and that was the final nail in the coffin of my career. I really thought I'd never sing "Kids in America" again.
I was 36 and had my spiritual needs. My poor spiritual needs had gone unattended for some time. Falling in love and having children awoke a lot of feelings inside of me, and one of the most powerful was the sense that I needed to get my hands in the earth. It happened at the same time I got pregnant, this great desire to be closer to nature. I spent most of the eighties and nineties plastered in makeup, and I had this real desire to go out and plant roses.
My career began as a video artist, and I was one of the best mimers in the business when I was on TV. But when my career began again, it was focused on live music. I was utterly astonished when I discovered there was still a crowd out there who wanted to watch a middle-aged housewife singing "Kids in America." The feeling was euphoric. I said yes to tours and more tours, and music came back into my life.
The eighties has had a massive revival in the past 20 years—during the nineties, though, it was given short shrift. People quickly forgot the good things. There seemed to be a lot of cynicism, mostly to do with politics and Thatcher, but music got thrown in with it. Greedy and of no substance, shoulder pads, spiky hair—that was eighties music summed up in a few vacuous words. It took a good 20 years for people to go, "You know, those records were great, and that was a fantastic time for pop music."
When I feel really self-conscious about singing "New York to East California," I think of the Police singing "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da," and then I don't feel so bad. Some records have that special magic about them, and "Kids in America" has it in bucket loads. I'm really proud to be associated with the song, and I've fallen back in love with it after turning my back on it for years. The love affair's back on!
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