The Beauty of British Song: Kim Wilde

Wilde about Kim? :-)

Kim Wilde, the daughter of British 1950s rock and roller Marty Wilde, first came to people's attention with her single "Kids In America," a song that's regrettably been turned into a commercial jingle of late. It hit number two in the United Kingdom in 1981 and reached number 25 in the United States a year later. With the release of her second album, Select, in the U.S., the pop press predicted a bright future for her with the very kids in America she sang about, but that didn't happen for reasons that boiled down to a single-named Yankee pop tart stealing her thunder.

Major success in America finally came for Wilde in 1987 with a cover of the Supremes classic "You Keep Me Hangin' On," a song she later admitted she wasn't familiar with - generation gap, perhaps - but that lack of familiarity allowed her to put her own spin on it. (Not as good a spin as on Vanilla Fudge's cover, though. ;-)) It hit number one in the U.S.

Although her 1988 album Close gave her four big hits in Europe - "Hey Mr. Heartache," You Came," "Never Trust a Stranger," and "Four Letter Word" - she was unable to repeat her success in the States. She remains active in pop music, though, and her eleventh studio album, Come Out and Play, is being released in August 2010.

And so we leave the little town of London, as this concludes my series on beautiful female British pop singers. :-)