Kids In America
The enduring story of Kim Wilde’s debut single
On January 26, 1981, the debut single of an English 20 year old girl called Kim Wilde was released in the United Kingdom. Entitled “Kids In America”, the music was composed by her brother Ricky, and her father, Reginald Smith. The latter was better known for Rock ‘n Roll anthems like “Teenager In Love”, “Sea Of Love” and “Donna”, just three of the 13 hit singles he’d had between 1958 and 1962 using the stage name Marty Wilde. No wonder, then, that Ricky and his sister Kim adopted that surname themselves when they started out in music. And so, in January 1981, Kim Wilde was presented to an unsuspecting audience. It was the start of a career that would last until this day.
The creation of “Kids In America”
Ricky Wilde was a pop singer in his own right between 1972 and 1974. With singles like “I Am An Astronaut”, “April Love” and “Teen Wave”, he managed to reach the charts in Scandinavia and get into some teen magazines back home in the UK. Ricky quit after “Teen Wave” in 1974 and left school a few years later to join his father Marty’s band.
The story of what happened next has become familiar to fans. In an interview for the BBC in 2001, Ricky told the story as follows:
It went from leaving school at 16 to joining my dad’s band, I was in his band for about a year and doing the same songs every night, after a while I was thinking “this is great fun, but I want a little bit more than this”. My dad always said, “songwriting is where you can really do well”. So I thought I would give that a go. The first song I wrote was a track called “Falling Out”. We went into the studio, Quest Studios in Luton, and we recorded about three or four tracks with me singing and Kim did the backing vocals. Then I tried to get a record deal. Thankfully, one of the first places I went to was Mickie Most’s label RAK and Mickie heard them and liked them and said, “You better come in and record them”. I wanted to produce them but Mickie didn’t feel I was ready. I was only eighteen then. I was a little bit pissed off about that but it wasn’t a big deal. So I thought, “what the hell, I’ll just cut these tracks with another producer. So while we were recording these, I said to Steve, who was the guy who was producing us, “is it alright if Kim does some backing vocals?”. And he said yeah. So she came in, singing like a canary, and Mickie came in while all this was going down, and he said to Steve, “she looks good, she’s got a really nice voice and I think she could do things, this girl. I think we should do something with her.”
Of course I was sitting there thinking “hang on a minute, I wanna have a crack at this”. I thought this could be my chance. So I booked a studio in Hertford that was owned by a band called the Enid for a couple of days and I went home and wrote “Kids In America” with dad, took Kim in, recorded the song, took it up to Mickie and said, “This is a track I’ve done with Kim, what do you think?”. He said, “I think it’s an absolute smash.”
With Mickie’s blessing, “Kids in America” was recorded at RAK studios in St. John’s Wood, London with Mickie Most at the mixing desk. Mickie Most commented in January 2001:
I think 32 mixes later we actually got it how we thought it should be. (…) The record came out and it was a really big hit.
So how come the song was called “Kids In America”? Ricky explained this in a TV special in 2013:
Bless dad, he’s the one who came up with the title. We were in the studio, we had everything but the title. And he goes: “What about Kids In America?”
“That’s the one, that’ll do, lovely.”
The music video
After the approval from Mickie Most and a recording in the pocket, a music video was necessary to promote the single not only in the UK but also overseas. Brian Grant was to be the director of the video, and Kim went to a studio in London to record the video with her brother, her band and a certain striped t-shirt which she’d bought at a jumble sale.
Kim told about this in 2001:
Of course I’d never made a video before and I found it very easy to do. I remember having a connection with the camera, which I found surprisingly easy to do, to watch it and to look at it and to dare it, flirt with it. It came very naturally. I wasn’t trained for that, I just was a natural flirt, I suppose. Brian actually sent someone out to get some wine to get me a little bit… more relaxed (laughs) and I think it did the trick.
Chart success
After a relatively slow start, “Kids In America” hit the UK singles chart four weeks after its release on February 21, 1981. A few days later, she performed the song on the BBC’s “Top Of The Pops”.
The chart success meant that Kim Wilde was quickly becoming the hype of the day.
We're all absolutely over the moon about it. Can't quite believe it, actually. We never expected it to take off like this. (The Sun, February 27, 1981)
The single peaked at no. 2 in the UK singles chart in March, and then quickly made its way into the charts all over Europe. The single became a number 2 hit in Australia, Ireland and Sweden, reached number 5 in Germany and Switzerland and number 6 in the Netherlands. In other countries “Kids In America” did equally well, so well in fact that the first cover versions of the song started to appear already in the same year (More about that below).
It would take the record company a year to get the single released in the USA, but when it was finally released, “Kids In America” reached number 25 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Cover versions
It could have ended then and there, but the song was quickly picked up by other acts. Perhaps surprisingly, the first cover versions of the song were recorded in Finland, with lyrics in Finnish. “Kaupungin lapset” was recorded by Mona Carita and released in the summer of 1981. Other versions of this song exist: the band TikTak (also from Finland) recorded a version of in 2001.
After 1981, “Kids in America” has been covered by numerous bands in America. Most versions are rock- and punk-oriented, performed by bands with colourful names like Lawnmower Deth, Bouncing Souls, Chaos Engine and Naked Aggression. I only know of one cover version that has been a hit: Dutch singer and TV presenter Kim-Lian van der Meij reached no. 15 in the Dutch charts back in 2004.
The most remarkable cover version, though, has to be the one that was recorded somewhere in the 1990's, and included as a track on an album called “Born to rock ‘n roll”. It was played by the very writer of the song lyrics and Kim’s father: Marty Wilde. Sometimes things come full circle.
