Iconic English pop singer Kim Wilde has opened up to Newsweek about an "alarming" injury she suffered in 2023 and how she is improving her mobility ahead of a 2025 tour.
Wilde first gained success in 1981 with her debut single "Kids in America" and followed this up with hits such as "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and "You Came." In the 80s she was the most charted solo female artist in the U.K., but after years in the music industry, she eventually went on a hiatus.
Now she's back and releasing new music, with her latest single, "Trail of Destruction" out now and her new album Closer, out January 31, 2025. Wilde is also going back on tour, hitting various venues across the U.K. in March.
In an interview with Newsweek, Wilde revealed she spent four months in 2023 suffering from back issues and has worked hard to make sure she can perform again—and now she's fitter than ever.
"A year ago I had a slipped disk, and it took about four months to recover, and I realized I hadn't really been looking after myself quite as well as I could have been," she explained.
"I've started training twice a week ever since that happened to strengthen my core, and I'm now 100 percent fit and fitter than I've ever been, in fact, and no pain. I think it's amazing the body's ability to recover.
"But you do need to help by keeping stretching, by keeping mobile. You have to, you know, lots of walking if you can, or any way of keeping moving, if you're sitting a lot, then be really aware of that, that you need to get up and stretch your legs and move around."
Wilde has loved walking her dog for years and she was concerned when last year she wasn't able to do so.
"It was really alarming the fact that I couldn't walk my dogs, the thought of not being able to get on stage and do my gigs, it was great motivation for me to get better," she said.
"As I say, it took four months, but it felt like forever at the time. I am absolutely determined I'm never going to go back to that again," she added, before sharing her advice for others: "You've got to keep moving. You know, if you can walk, walk, you're doing your body a great favor."
In 1982, the year after the release of Wilde's hit song "Kids in America," the track reached No. 25 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for over a month. It also ranked as the 91st-most-successful song of the year on the Hot 100 year-end chart. Proving to be popular, it was widely played on MTV and various radio stations.
The track has stood the test of time, which Wilde thinks is "a testament to the song itself."
"It's such a banger. It was a banger back in 1981 and it's not lost any of its energy. And, you know, I feel that every time I play it live," she told Newsweek.
"You know, you can feel like this tsunami of energy rushing the stage as the pulse starts up at the beginning of the song. It's an amazing record and brilliantly produced and it just jumps out of the radio and still makes people feel glad to be alive somehow.
"Some pop songs have the ability to do that and I feel very grateful that my father and my brother wrote that song for me all those years ago because it's still my passport to the world."
The star eventually stepped back from the music industry to live a secluded life with her actor husband Hal Fowler and their two children. After 25 years of marriage, Wilde and Fowler announced their divorce in 2022.
Wilde is a lover of pop music, so she couldn't stay away from the music industry for long. Her new album is a "blueprint" of her 1988 album Close.
"When I say blueprint, I mean we wanted to, I guess we took inspiration from our album from 1988 which had songs like 'You Came' on it and 'Never Trust a Stranger' and 'Four Letter Word,'" the singer said.
"There was a strength in the diversity of that album, but also real powerful, really powerful melodies and lyrics. And we took inspiration from, from that album for the new album Closer, which we thought would be a fun sort of relationship between the past and now very much the present and hopefully into the future.
"So yeah, that's what the album Closer is all about. It's taking inspiration from the past, but making it fresh and new again."
When asked her thoughts on the pop industry and whether it has changed, Wilde—who calls herself a Swiftie—said people's appetite for the genre is the same, but everything else has changed.
"The music industry is completely transformed from the vinyl. There's a great return to vinyl, but nonetheless, it's the whole way that we receive music and streaming and the like ... And it's just incredible, where we've come from, how we access music, but if you put on the radio, they're still playing three-minute-something pop songs. So some things never change," she said.
"And I think people [still] have an appetite and love for a song that just talks a little bit about life and their and whoever's singing their experience of it. And then many people might respond to that go, 'Yeah, I feel just like that. That song is just saying how I feel right now at this time.'
"I think that's why a lot of people are resonating with [her song] 'Trail of Destruction.' They just look out and they see a world where humans are just leaving a trail of destruction, left, right and center—whether that's at a human level, with a war, or with an environmental level—against our beautiful planet. So I think there's an exasperation about the world and how we're living on it, how humans treat the world and treat each other."
Kim Wilde tours the U.K. in March 2025 with support from Cutting Crew—tickets on sale now via https://www.kimwilde.com
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
