Kim Wilde

Daughter of a singer (Joyce Smith, of The Vernons Girls, in the early 1960s) and rocker Marty Wilde (one of the pioneers of British rock'n'roll in the 1950s), Kimberley Smith, known as Kim Wilde, was born in Chiswick (Middlesex, England) on November 18, 1960. She enjoyed immediate success in the early 1980s with a series of chart-topping hits, in the synthpop and new wave style of the time, composed by her brother: "Kids in America" (No. 4 in France in 1981), "Chequered Love" (No. 4 in the UK), "Cambodia" (No. 15 in France), "View From a Bridge" (No. 15 in 1982), "You Came" (No. 3 in the UK), except for The Supremes cover, "You Keep Me Hangin' On" (US No. 1 in 1986). In 1985, Laurent Voulzy custom-wrote "Les Nuits sans Kim Wilde", a hit on which she sang. Her heyday began to wane at the end of the decade, after eight million albums sold and a shift towards dance pop. She appeared on stage in the play inspired by The Who's Tommy (1997) and retrained as a horticulturalist, only to return to song in 2006 with Never Say Never, her first pop-rock album in ten years. She returned regularly thereafter with the releases of Come Out and Play (2010), Snapshots (2011), Noël Wilde 's album Winter Songbook (2013) and Here Come the Aliens (2018). Following the release of her first live album, Aliens Alive (2019), Kim Wilde is back in 2025 with the album Closer, featuring guest appearances by former Ultravox and Visage singer Midge Ure and daughter Scarlett Wilde.