Kids In America You Keep Me Hanging On Water On Glass Kim Wilde

Kids In America Album: Kim Wilde (1981)
You Keep Me Hanging On Album: Another Step (1986)
Water On Glass Album: Kim Wilde (1981)
by Kim Wilde

Kids In America was written by Wilde's brother Ricky and her father Marty. The Wilde family is from Chiswick, England, which might explain the questionable geography in the lyrics, as the line, "New York to East California" would most likely land you in the Mojave Desert - most songs celebrating California refer to the much more hospitable coastal areas.

This was Wilde's first single. She racked up 19 Top-40 hits in England, but just one more in the US: a #1 cover of "You Keep Me Hangin' On." She later became a prominent gardening expert in England.

Marty Wilde (Kim's father), was a popular performer in England, racking up several hits there.
This was featured on the soundtrack of the mostly-forgotten movie Reckless, starring Darryl Hannah and Aiden Quinn. A cover by The Muffs was used to open the movie Clueless.

In 2007, Jonas Brothers recorded a new version called "Kids Of The Future" for the Disney movie Meet The Robinsons. The song was also covered by Len for the movie Digimon and by No Secrets for Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

A YouTube film of Wilde's impromptu drunken performance of Kids In America on a tube train in December 2012 went viral. The singer told The Independent that she was mortified when it became a huge trending video on Twitter. "I was with my brother, on my way home after some drinks, and I just started singing," Wilde explained. "When I woke up the next day it'd all kicked off on Twitter and I thought, 'Whatever career I have right now, I probably buried it.' What amazed me was that people thought it was fun and sweet and it's made me realise that the public have more time for me than I thought."

The Muffs were given a few songs to choose from for Clueless and picked Kids In America because it was the catchiest. They never learned to play it live until they were asked to be a part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the soundtrack's release and were expected to perform the song. Kim Shattuck, lead singer of the pop-punk band, explained to Culture Brats why The Muffs abandoned the song for so long: "The lyrics are really stupid. It's very embarrassing to sing them. I just had an attitude about it because I didn't write it... It was just kind of weird and awkward for us to play it but once we started playing it, we realized people really enjoy seeing us play that song and the fact that we didn't really play it was kind of rebellious for no reason."

Kim Wilde was still living with her parents and brother when she recorded "Kids In America." Ricky's bedroom was next to Kim's, which led to some sibling bickering.

"He'd got himself a Wasp keyboard –­ the little yellow and black thing – and I was really annoyed by all the noises coming out of his room," she recalled to TeamRock. "It had a sort of pulsing beat which ended up being the intro to Kids In America. That was particularly annoying coming through into my room while I was trying to listen to Joni Mitchell."

Marty Wilde's lyrics were inspired by his preoccupation with American rock music. "My dad's head went into a fantasy, this idea of everything being better in America," Kim Wilde recalled. "Of course for his generation, that was very true. Everyone was going to drive in movies and drinking milkshakes and having hamburgers in America. We weren't doing things like that in the UK. I think a lot of that got caught up in the lyrics – all the kids in America are having a better, more interesting, more dangerous time than we were here."

"When Elvis and rock and roll was imported over from America, it was to a generation of kids whose parents had dealt with the war, and rationing, and they'd all been brought up in pretty poor conditions," she continued. "When rock and roll came along, it was a great thing for the kids to dream about again. They dared to have an identity, for starters. They dared to dream through these great records imported from America. That's where the great love affair started for my father – as soon as he heard an Elvis Presley record."

"I'll never really fully understand what made him write those lyrics, because there's something very private about lyrics and the lyricist, but I did enjoy singing them," Kim Wilde concluded. "They had a rebellious quality that sat with me very well at the time. I was a bit of a rebel without a cause, but I was a rebel nonetheless."

"You Keep Me Hangin' On" is a song written and composed by Holland–Dozier–Holland. It was first recorded in 1966 by American Motown group the Supremes, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. American rock band Vanilla Fudge released a cover version in June the following year, which reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100. Wilson Pickett recorded it in 1969. English singer Kim Wilde covered "You Keep Me Hangin' On" in 1986, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1987. In the first 32 years of the Billboard Hot 100 rock era, "You Keep Me Hangin' On" became one of the six songs to reach number one by two different musical acts.

Wilde's version was a total re-working of the original, completely transforming the Supremes' Motown Sound into a hi-NRG song.

It was released as the second single from Wilde's fifth studio album, Another Step (although "You Keep Me Hangin' On" was the LP's first worldwide single, as the first single had been released only in selected countries). The song reached number two in Wilde's native United Kingdom, and number one in Australia. It also became Wilde's second and last top-40 entry in the United States following "Kids in America" (1981), as well as her most successful song in that country to date, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in June 1987. It later ranked as the 34th best-selling song of 1987 on Billboard's Hot 100 year-end chart that year. "You Keep Me Hangin' On" was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for UK sales in excess of 250,000 copies.

In 2006, Wilde performed a new version of the song with German singer Nena for her Never Say Never album.

Wilde filmed a music video to promote the song. Directed by Greg Masuak, the video shows Wilde in a dark room lying on a large bed. She then rises from the bed as she sings the song and finds herself being "threatened" by a strange man who is breaking down the walls around her.

Water On Glass was the third single by British singer Kim Wilde from her self titled debut album. It was released in the UK, Ireland and Mexico only.

Kim's father, the former rock 'n' roll singer Marty Wilde, and her brother, Ricky, wrote the song. Its subject matter is tinnitus, which is a condition that involves a perception of a ringing or other noise within the ear.

A slightly different version of the song was featured on Wilde's eponymous debut album. It was released in the UK, Ireland and The Netherlands only with the non-album track "Boys" on the B-side. The song was also the first track by Kim Wilde to appear on a Billboard chart, reaching #53 on the Top 60 Rock Tracks on 15 May 1982.