I Survived The '80s

Today's electro tomboys – Robyn, Little Boots and Charli XCX – are indebted to Kim Wilde. The peroxide blonde singer of 1981's punky pop Kids In America is enjoying a revival after a brief reinvention as an environmentally-conscious landscape gardener. She's also a UK radio personality and improbable YouTube sensation – but more on that later.

Come October, Wilde will touch down in Australia for the first time since 2003's Here And Now Tour, which she recalls as "wonderful". "The Aussies seem to really love that '80s vibe." (Wilde last headlined dates behind a '90s 'greatest hits' collection.) Disinclined to fight retromania, she'll be accompanied by Nik Kershaw, the synth-popster of Wouldn't It Be Good fame who single-handedly popularised the snood. He will play in her band. The pair encountered each other "back in the day", Wilde says, both being with MCA Records. They'd bond on the '80s show circuit, becoming "good mates". "He's really part of our extended family now."

For the London-born Kim Smith, it's always been about family. The art student's breakthrough, Kids..., from her eponymous debut, was penned by her '50s rock 'n' roller dad Marty Wilde and brother Ricky Wilde – a sometime Donny Osmond-like child star who'd intended to release Kids... himself until RAK's Mickie Most heard a girl's backing vocals on the demo. Wilde & Son, a micro talent company, composed the bulk of Kim's material, with Ricky producing (she began writing later). Wilde's retired singer mother Joyce took care of the business side with an old family friend who still manages her to this day. 

Wilde emerged as the '80s' most successful British female soloist, quickly shedding pesky comparisons to Blondie's Debbie Harry while rivalling Madonna's trajectory. Some of her singles had beguiling narratives, like the synthy Cambodia or dark disco View From A Bridge. There were bold stylistic turns, too, Wilde going rockabilly with Love Blonde. 

Just as her career dipped, Wilde pulled out a monster hit with that hi-NRG cover of The Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On – it topped the US charts. (Wilde apparently doesn't know Mark Ronson's Northern Soul mash-up of You... and The Smiths' Stop Me... with Aussie Daniel Merriweather.) Wilde's biggest album was 1988's dancey Close, home to You Came. She even opened for Michael Jackson, circa Bad, in Europe. Wilde had "very little" contact with the King of Pop, however. "He was very much living in his ivory castle and keeping himself away from a lot of people. Obviously, when you're touring at that level, that happens any way, just from a security point of view. But I only met him briefly. We did a photograph together. He just seemed very reluctant to engage socially really at all. So that was fine. I was happy to do 32 shows with him. Someone told me he had a screen set up in his dressing room and he used to watch me outside (laughs) – I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I got told that by a few people. I used to stand on the side of the stage and watch him. He really inspired me to raise my own personal bar. It was an amazing circus to be part of for a month or so."

The early '90s were tough for Wilde. Her final real hit was Love Is Holy, helmed by Lana del Rey's future cohort Rick Nowels. Yet Wilde nominates 1995's Now & Forever as her most underrated album. "It was in a more R&B sort of soul groove direction – and people really weren't ready to hear Kim Wilde sing in that way. The album really didn't do so well at all. It was one of the albums that led me to think that maybe it was time to get out of the music industry – which I did just a few years later. I just thought, Well, I don't think that the public really want me to move on – and so I decided to get out. I'd met my husband [actor Hal Fowler] by then and I thought, You know, I'll go off and try a new adventure." Wilde was also "a bit sick of" her own catalogue. "I got involved in a musical in the West End called Tommy by The Who, which was a good halfway house to go and do something very different. But little did I know my husband was there waiting to meet me and our life was about to change dramatically – and here we are 17 years later with two teenage children and a good life." She'd pursue another interest – studying horticulture. A celebrity gardener, Wilde would write columns, publish books and present TV programs – and she won at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Music called her back a decade ago. Wilde duetted with German New Waver Nena (99 Luftballons) on Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime, a nostalgic Euro smash. "I really realised how much I loved those old songs, actually. We just got all a bit over-familiar with each other. We needed a bit of a cooling-off period."

Wilde last issued a subversive covers set, Snapshots , in 2011 (there's an East 17 song!). She's plotting a rock/pop album for next year. Meanwhile, Wilde has "just put to bed" a Christmas record – half of which are original songs. "I'm very proud of it," she says coyly. "I'm really excited – there's lots of exciting guests on it... I've always wanted to make a Christmas album. I love Christmas. It's a big family time for me, always has been – and, in good times and bad, Christmas always comes through." And she's reinterpreted Stevie Wonder's Every Time I See You I Go Wild for Dark, the third volume in the British Electric Foundation's series Music Of Quality And Distinction. BEF producer (and Heaven 17 member) Martyn Ware notably orchestrated Tina Turner's '80s comeback with a sleek rendition of Al Green's Let's Stay Together.

That Wilde should cut a Christmas album may be strategic. In December the "tipsy" singer burst into Kids... and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree on a train – and this found its way onto YouTube. Wilde insists it was all spontaneous. As host of Magic FM's Sunday show Secret Songs, she'd been asked to perform acoustically with Ricky at the station's Christmas party. "We got on the train to go back. I'd nicked a pair of [reindeer] antlers from the party. We sat there and I just thought, How many times am I gonna be sat on a train in the middle of the night with Ricky and a guitar at Christmas? Let's get up and sing some songs! Oh dear – if anyone had told me at the time, You realise that nearly two million people around the world are gonna watch this?, I'd never have believed it in a million years." The footage is posted on Magic's website – and Wilde regularly jokes about it. Florence Welch has since led a sing-along on The Tube, and Michael Bublé staged a performance in New York's Subway. "I like to think that I did it first," Wilde laughs.

The Brit's renewed musical activity has left little time for gardening. She now goes with the flow. "I actually got out of the music business and gardening replaced it somehow, in a most unusual way. But I wasn't planning that. It just happened – and I went with it, really. Then, as soon as music started coming back in, and increasingly so, I just kind of backed off on the professional aspects of gardening." Besides, "jugging" dual vocations with kids was too much.

The New Wave princess, who made dance music before it was recognised as a genre, is positive about contemporary pop. She commends young female singer/songwriters like Adele, Ellie Goulding and Emeli Sandé. Internet exposure has allowed for stylistic diversity, Wilde feels. The current-sounding Kids... has been covered by every act from Wilde herself to Nirvana (live) to the Jonas Brothers ("they did something a bit weird to it," she says of the renamed Kids Of The Future). One Direction performed it on The X Factor. But, as of yet, no rapper has grimed Kids... up. "People do still grab hold of that song and try to bring something new to it, but I think there's only one version of that song that really counts – and that's the original one from 1981."

Many of Wilde's peers have battled depression, alcoholism, drug addiction and poverty. She could be the '80s' greatest survivor. Wilde credits family for safeguarding her. "I was very protected. I had a lot of people around me who knew exactly what was going on, knew what they were doing, and shielded me from a lot of the pressure and a lot of the insecurity that goes with that." Being in a team, she likewise retained her "autonomy". "Sometimes it worked really well, other times it worked far less well. But we were determined to make our own path and to be true to that – and I'm glad we did. We didn't feel compromised. We felt very independent from any pressure from anything that was corporate or negative in any way." Not that dealing with family has necessarily been devoid of conflict, Wilde laughs. "There's no easy ride. I mean, it made it easier in many ways, but it wasn't a completely pain-free experience."