I'm enchanted by Taylor Swift!'

‘Not-so-secret Swiftie’ Kim Wilde chats about why she gave up her pop career for horticulture and how that made her eventual return to music even more of a thrill

- MITYA UNDERWOOD

Kim Wilde describes her relationship with pop music as an “enduring love affair” she can’t imagine living without.

It’s in large part, she says, thanks to her musician father Marty, who has instilled in her the firm belief that age isn’t a reason to stop doing what you love. So, 43 years after her debut, Kids In America, she’s still releasing music and is heading out on tour again next year.

“My dad is just putting out a new single as well,” she tells us from her Hertfordshire home. “And he still gets really excited about pop music. He’s the one that played me tracks from Beyoncé’s new album a few months ago when it came out. We’re all big popheads in my family.

“We’ve loved it since we were children and we still love it now. It’s the enduring love affair of this family.”

While Kim, 63, shares her dad’s enthusiasm for Beyoncé’s diverse Cowboy Carter album, her heart very much lies rooted in the 1980s, where she cemented her own status as a pop legend with hits such as Kids In America, You Keep Me Hangin’ On and You Came.

The first of these was written by her dad and younger brother Ricky, and recorded by Kim the year before in a local studio owned by prog rock band The Enid (Kim once said the studio was “full of reptiles and other slithery things”).

After being shelved for a year – during which time Kim returned to working in a pub – it made such an impact on release, selling 60,000 copies in a single day, that it was left out of the official charts because some suspected the numbers must have been faked. They weren’t, of course, and it peaked at No2 in the UK and No25 in the US, as well as landing in the top five in Finland, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia.

It’s also been covered by an eclectic mix of artists including The Muffs, who covered it for the 1995 film Clueless, Foo Fighters and Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day.