That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Kim Wilde

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Kim Wilde burst on to the music scene in 1981 with 'Kids In America' and has since been a mainstay of pop. Kim loves music and gardening and performing and she sits down with Gaby for a cuppa to talk about all these things and more. She's also a big fan of sea swimming (Producer Joe approves) and paddle boarding - and tells Gaby how she's finding more and more hobbies and passions later in life. We hope you enjoy the chat and maybe get some inspiration from it too! And remember, you can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel - which is where you'll also find our bonus Show & Tell episodes, each and every Friday! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kim Wilde welcome to reasons to be joyful. Quite frankly, you are a joy spreader. We love joy spreaders on this podcast. Oh, bless you Gabby. And you are a joy spread yourself, darling. And you always have been. No, well, so we've known each other a very long old time. Yes, we have.

But I think it was about three weeks since kids in America came out. Does it feel like that? Yeah, maybe three months. Three months? I'll go three weeks to three months. I mean, it was like yesterday a lot of the time. Time is weird, though. Do you ever, this is a really odd question.

But do you ever sit down? Somebody the other day said to me, oh yeah, no, in 98 something or other happened. And I said, oh, yeah, that was just a couple of... And then I realise it was not a couple of years ago. No, and time is going so fast. Now, obviously, the older you get, it does that, and everyone compares notes about that.

And I think it's why a lot of people in our generation are just really living life big time, while they can, and they appreciate it more perhaps, they appreciate that they're healthy, that they can get out of bed by themselves, that they can, perhaps go paddleboarding, which I've learned how to do last year. Hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just row back on that then.

Paddle boarding, can you stand? Yes, I can stand. You got, you, wow. Okay, what's the tip for paddleboarding and standing? Because I can do it on my knees. Yeah. The minute I stand up, I laugh. Yeah, well, you know, it takes a bit of getting used to, but I've given it a good go, and I've got a great tutor. I've got some great people who I do it with.

I mean, that does help. But, you know, we're trying in the sea. I mean, the sea is, you know, a tricky place sometimes. You paddleboard in the sea? I do sometimes, yeah, and I end up in the sea and all year round. I mean, I've been doing, I went skiing again a year or so back for the first time. I'm in like 12 years. So, yeah, what I'm saying is that when you get to 60 something, you're kind of thinking, I'm going to do all this right now in the years while I can.

I appreciate life more now and I appreciate my health because I slipped my disc a year or so ago. And I was very disabled with that for about four months. And I vowed if I could get myself better, I was just going to go for everything. I was going to ski, I was going to get in the sea, I was going to learn how to surf. I was going to get on a paddleboard. So have you done all of those? I'm doing surfing in this summer going to learn how to get on a surfboard

okay not only were you always cool you are still so super cool I still want to go back to paddleboarding what do you put on your feet do you have good barefoot or the nose I've got sea shoes yeah okay so you wear sea shoes

I do wear sea shoes okay and you just see I laugh okay I love that you paddle can we go paddleboarding together I love it please I will actually we I laugh that much I've actually might you know I mean, yeah, absolutely. It's lovely on rivers.

It's lovely anywhere. It's a wonderful thing to do canals. Oh, I love that you paddleboard. Okay, so paddleboarding. You went skiing again. I think that's a silly thing. You put things on your feet and you slide down an icy bit. I like a zip wire.

That's my obsession. Well, that's fantastic. Zip wire? No, I have not. Right, we'll swap. So you come zip wiring with me. Oh, my gosh. It's the best fun.

It must be such fun. It is the best fun. Yeah. But also, you see. say surfing. Now I've never attempted this. Talk me through surfing, please. Okay, well I mean, my son surfs and

friends of mine do surf and I thought well, I'd like to give it a go, that's all. So I'm going to have some lessons in Cornwall this summer and see if I can... All I want to do is stand on the surfboard for just a stand. I want to stand. I want to stand. I haven't done it yet,

but I figure if I can paddleboard I've got a good chance to standing up for a few seconds and living my dream. I mean, I'm not going to be out on those big waves. I'm nothing like that. The sea... No, no, no. I'm not going to be doing that. But I just love being by the sea. I love being in the sea.

Do you do... Oh, are you one of those? One of the ones that does the... Yes, I am one of those. I'm one of those that would run in on New Year's Day. No! Why? Everybody... Joe, who works here? He's just cheering behind you through the glass. I just love getting in cold water. It's just... And it's good for us, I know.

Obvious health benefits, all of that kind of stuff. C's a great place to do it. Yeah. So I've been having a lot of fun, as you can hear. Here's the thing about the cold water swimming. Hot bars are so much nicer than the cold water swim. I have a hot bath every night, Gabby. Don't, you know.

Okay. Oh, that's all right. Don't make any mistake. I love my hot bars too. Okay, that's okay. All right, so you've got the surfing, the skiing, the paddle boarding. We're going zip-waring. I love that you still got dreams, hopes and ambitions.

Are there other things you still want to do? You've got to keep active on it. I mean, you know, I just, I'm very aware of my health. You know, I've sort of had a few run-ins with COVID and flu at this Christmas and all kinds of stuff. And I'm just really aware that we've got to look after ourselves, you know, to keep our immune system strong, keep our body strong. You know, our weight train now. That's so good for us. Yeah, doing everything I can just to keep this body going strong and having fun.

And gardening. Are you still a horticulturalist? Yes, I am. I'm very much a gardener. As I say, I planted over 200 bulbs daffodils last year for a friend of mine along the drive. And they're looking beautiful and multiplying already. So, yeah, gardening is still a big part of my life. Isn't it?

It's so, it was very interesting when you came out as a gardener and everybody was, I remember all the interviews. I think I probably chatted you then as well. But everyone was like, Oh, what a change? It was sort of like you'd church. I mean, it was really weird. Yeah, it was. The reaction was really odd. It was really quite strong reaction.

It's just like, what's a radio's pop star doing gardening? And, you know, gardening for me has just brought so much joy. It's so inspiring. It's just a very spiritual, therapeutic thing to do as has been, you know, as gets talked about a lot in the media. about the benefits for mental health and well-being to be out in the, even just to be out in a woodland or in a park or just to be outside.

Let alone get your hands in the earth and start interacting with the plants and helping them grow or even just observing them grow and then observing what happens around them with all the birds and the bees and all the insects and it's all a part of loving our environment and wanting to look after it

and celebrate it and treasure it. So what's so odd about that? It's odd not to, isn't it? I think that the odd thing was the reaction. Yeah. Not odd that you were doing it. No, no. And it was, for me, it definitely started as a therapy.

You know, crazy life travelling all the time and being Kim Wilde. I talk about her in the third post for some time. It's very funny, but you do that, don't you? I do from time to time. I mean, we're one and the same, But sometimes there's a definite point where one viz off into another road and leaves me there.

Quite happy to watch a toggle off and BKW. That's quite good though. To be able to separate yourself from it. I mean, it really was crazy. It was crazy for you, wasn't it? It was a very crazy time. The 80s and then, you know, you suddenly said, I'm not going to do this in the middle of the 90s.

And you did your musicals and you did all of those things. and presented. But, but it was, sorry to keep using the word, but it was, it was crazy. You couldn't go anywhere. You were everything that you, anything you did, any breath you took.

It was Kim Wild, Kim Wilde's done this, Kim Wilde as well, she wears this, she's done that, look, she's done to her hair. Oh, who's she's seeing? Who's not, she, you know, it was just insane. Yeah, I mean, it's the nature of being famous and it took a bit of getting used to. It's been a roller coaster,

ride for sure but the baseline has always been that I've loved music so much that it's kind of it kind of went off like the water on the back of a duck and the thing that really mattered was music and singing and becoming a songwriter

just having a life in the music industry which is which I'm so grateful for and I still seem to have which is amazing don't say seem to have like let's talk about the new you have not seem to have you absolutely have So the new single, new album,

and I've read about what you think about the song, and all the songs on it, this is quite a, this is a big thing for you, isn't it, this new album and Midnight Train as well? Yeah, I mean, we are incredibly excited about this album. It's taken up all our time when we haven't been on the road touring for the last few years. We used our album Close,

which were featuring on our tour this March, the Closer Tour, which were featuring Close, which was the album that had Never Trust a Stranger and Four Letter Word and you came on it. And we're sort of marrying that up with a new album, closer, and we've used the same pitch, the same artwork, the same pose of the photograph I did back then and now, there's a kind of connection between them

in many different ways, subject matter in some instances of the songs we've written. But from obviously, there's nearly four, 40 years between them. And we're still as passionate about pop music as we were back then as we are now. And the album itself, you know, it kind of veers in all kinds of different directions

just as the way that Close did back in 88. Sometimes it gets very quite dark and very serious. There's a song on the new album called Hourglass Human, which is really sort of... I imagined what it would be if you were an alien looking down with perhaps another alien at your side, one that you got on well with, and you would be looking down at the planet

and seeing what we're doing to each other. And this is the song I think you would write at that moment. So it says it's a pretty hard-hitting, pull-no-punches kind of song, but that's where we go. And then there's other songs which are just like full-on fun and pop and gold rap. And then we go a bit Gary Newman, and then we hit a few Durand-Duran notes, and then we head off in a different way,

just celebrating. pop. I love that. And it's funny that you've always been very openly about pop and people get, it's sort of, if I speak to actors who have been in soaps there's a real sort of snobby thing about it, but my word, they work hard. And it's the same as any singer-songwriter I talk to about pop. They love reclaiming that word because I personally, as somebody who buys music, who loves music, who

dreams music. It's in my life. I love pop. I love it. Yeah, good on you, Gabby. Because for a long time, as you know, pop became a bit of a dirty word, especially in the 90s, I suppose. But anyway, it has been reclaimed and for good, you know, for good reason. And everyone knows that, you know, it's a small word, it's three letters. And it's an umbrella for a lot of different subgenre, lots of different genres of music. But ultimately, It's popular. It's a song that people want to hear. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, exactly. It's not a sin. I love that. And you can, and it can be so diverse, you know, so there's a lot of diversity again at the moment with pop music, which I'm really enjoying. I had a conversation with somebody who's mad about punk, and I'm not, I'm not a punk fan. I'm not, but they were talking about a song. And I said, well, that's pop. The song that they were talking about, they said, no, it's punk. I went, that's pop. It was popular.

it was populist and everybody knew it and everybody would sing along. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The inconvenient truth, Abby. It's so funny how people are. Do you, and you were talking about yourself in the third person, does that, do you let that other Kim go out there?

So when you're going on tour and with the album and everything that's happening now and it's what busy year you've got coming up, music-wise, do you, is that the other Kim that goes out there? and does that? Or is that, are you both together? That sounds a bit esoterical, but you know what I mean? Oh, no, we go out together.

Yeah, no, we go out. But I do know when to let her go, you know, I know where to let her off her lead. And then she trots off and disappears a bit. I always know how to bring it realer back in again. I, you know, I don't take myself that seriously. I think that's really what I'm trying to say. But when I go on stage, I'm dead serious about it.

At that point, at that moment when I'm on stage and I'm singing with the band and the way we're presenting it and every little detail that goes with it from what I'm wearing to the lights, the sound, absolutely everything. We're seriously serious about it. There's no just oh we hope it works

or frivolousness about it at all. But because music really means something to you. You love it? It really does. It's your first love, is it? I think it's... Apart for your kids. Apart from my kids,

I think this is the most enduring love affair I'll ever have in my whole life. Yeah. Yeah. When you were a child, and obviously you were brought up around music for both parents, but did you, was there, did you do the thing that I'm sure most children do? You know, people want to be footballers, people want to be pop stars. Did you do the hairbrush in the mirror and sing along to things? I think that's what I want to do.

When you were very little, because you were very young when you started. Yeah, I mean, music was in the house all the time. my dad was always playing guitar or playing great, great albums. He's had an amazing record collection. So great music was playing all the time. Or we were going to gigs and standing side of stage watching my dad perform. Or we were listening to fantastic stuff in the car or on the radio, which was constantly on in the house.

So music really, it was just saturated with music, the whole thing. And then, of course, we grew up in amazing decades, you know, the 60s with the Beatles and the Beach Boys and Motown. in the 70s, which was a really fun era to grow up in for pop music. All of us watching Top of the Pops on Thursday night. Yeah, and then, you know, and then found ourselves in the 80s at 20 years old wanting to make pop records. So it was then, it wasn't when you were little with the hairbrush in your hand that you thought, that's what I want to do.

I kind of knew I wanted to be in music. And I did love Top of the Pops, and I'm sure there was a time when I thought I could be the third singer in Abba or something. Yeah, I mean, yeah, to a degree, but I was never in love with the idea of being famous. I was more in love with the idea of being a musician. And actually, I wanted to be a session singer before I, you know, recorded kids in America. I just thought that would be great.

You get to work with all those fantastic artists. In those days, I don't mean, there are still session singers and people who have a career with it, maybe less so now. but in those days it was something I was really thinking seriously about there's a brilliant documentary that won an Oscar about backing singers

well somebody must know that Joe must know the name of that the Oscar winning film about backing singers it's absolutely brilliant I'll find out what it's called yeah because actually my mum as it turned out as it turned out

I mean she was in one of the first girl bands ever I mean I guess that's the Vernon girls who were a girl troupe on a TV show on a live music TV show that's where she met my dad

and they were all like yeah they were the first gang of girls all sort of singing and dancing in the UK all from Liverpool and then she became a session singer a little bit before she had me and my brother but yeah so I knew a lot about

session singers and I knew how they the money was really good and I thought You know what? I think I fancy a bit of that, but kids in America picked me to the post. It was just enormous. It was a crash in for all of us. I mean, that was it. Everybody wanted to look like Kim Wild, be Kim Wild, sing the song. And still to this day, and I talked about it on the radio show, obviously. But I sing that. So the minute I think of your name, it goes to, you know, my teenage,

years and I'm singing along to that and I'm so wanting to be blonde although miraculously something happened and I became blonde I don't know how that happened but but it was the whole look it was everything and you were just the girl that you you sort of went out there and you did it I think you gave us all hope well I think a lot of the appeal that I had in retrospect is that I didn't really I didn't really want to be famous I wasn't that interested in being famous So all that sort of sulky face and everything was the real me. I was just like, oh, so this is what I've got to do. So, you know, I wasn't, you know, a lot of people really chase fame.

I was really the opposite of that. And so when it all happened to me, it was a bit like, this is very inconvenient. And are you really going to ask me that question? And I had a bit of a, you know, chip on my shoulder about everything, you know, and I was trying to be cool. I mean, any 20-year-old would want to be like that. So it was quite interesting.

I was very authentic at that time and that's what people picked up on they thought, oh yeah, well, believe her. I believe this goal. And we still do. Yeah. When you look out at the audience when you do your gigs now,

do you see, I mean it's all ages. My kids love you, they think you're so cool, but they love your music. And I was playing them your new stuff as well. And they were, they were just like, oh, this is so good. Oh, she sounds, you know. Oh, she's better than so-so.

We talk about today's people. And then I said, yeah, that's Kim. And they went, yeah, no, no, no, kids in America. I mean, but also they would take, they would go through all your songs, the 80s. My kids love 80s music. They love it. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of young people turn up on our gigs. It's incredible, and they know all the words.

So, you know, there are all ages there. Yeah, the whole, it's a real cross-section of generations. It's a lovely sight when you're standing on stage and you see all those different generations all together going out together and all having fun together. It's a beautiful thing. You know, you were saying that you like cold water swimming. The other thing that everybody talks about and sort of poo-poo's,

but I'm all for it and I think you are too. It's talk about gratitude. And what I get from you is you are incredibly grateful. You've gone through stuff, everybody's gone through stuff. They have, yeah. But you're very grateful, aren't you? I really am, Gabby. You know, if you get to 60 and you're not grateful for stuff,

you've really got to take a hard look at yourself. So, yes, I'm not 60 anymore, but I am... But 33? I am 33, and I'm incredibly grateful for every day and every good thing that happens to me. And, yeah, I've had adversity. Everyone has that, and I've learnt from it, And I've actually, yeah, I found it an amazing journey.

And I feel like the best is kind of yet to come somehow. It feels like that all the time these days. It's amazing. I never thought that I get to 60 and have perhaps one of the best decades of my whole life. Kim Wild, what a wonderful thing to say. Thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast. Oh, thank you. It's lovely to see you, gorgeous woman.

You're so wonderful.