Kim Wilde - Child Come Away
I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable with regards to 80s pop music. I'd be happy to have a crack on Mastermind with 80s chart music as my specialist subject. Three 80s artists who had hits with different songs all called The Power Of Love, no problem, no pass. Who sang Saddle Up and Ride My Pony - that would be David Christie, Clive etc (immortalised by Billy Connolly’s incontinence trousers, also 80s). So imagine my surprise when a Tweet popped up with a Smash Hits singles review from 1982 with single of the week - Kim Wilde - Child Come Away. I genuinely had zero recollection of it. Perhaps because it only made number 43 in the UK charts but I listened to Radio 1 avidly and loved Kim’s singles. How did I not know about it? So of course I had to investigate further. Dear reader it is utterly remarkable.
Where would we be without Google? It would have taken weeks at the library to discover this stuff in 1982. Today I found this quote from Kim in seconds from the Kim Wilde website
Kim about ‘Child Come Away’
After my second album Select, we put out ‘Child Come Away’ as an interim single and it didn’t do anything. I think that made us realise that there’s no point putting out something if you’re not 100 percent behind it.
Having listened to it, read the lyrics and seen the video I don’t fully understand this quote. Maybe she means it lacked the publicity of an album release. Maybe Radio 1 just didn't get it. Maybe because it’s not an upbeat typically Kim song but it must have leapt out of the radio with it’s hypnotic Depeche Mode / OMD stylings and echoes of Hazel O’Connor’s - Will You in the sax led outro. I'm intrigued.
The lyrical content is so dark. A missing child, a girl on a beach, mystery writing in the sand, a girl being driven away with marks on her face. I was becoming more intrigued.
I read the story about a week ago
They found her on the beach that night
They thought the light had gone out of her eyes
and no-one thinks she'll ever be right
She was so full of her life
Happy with the people she knew
But then no-one can tell
I wondered if it was a real life incident given the treatment much like Boomtown Rats - Don’t Like Mondays. Ricky and Marty Wilde who wrote the song have history as can been seen in songs like Cambodia which I’ve written of previously . Taking real life events and turning them into potential pop hits for Kim. They were never frightened of tackling the human condition head on. View From A Bridge anyone? Blimey.
But then a voice said jump
And I just let go
And I'm floating out in space
But then I feel your arms
And I turn around
To a ghost without a face
And I just don't know
What's fact or fantasy
'Cos when I look below the bridge
I see it's me
View from a bridge, can't take anymore
Suicide over a lost love? Maybe the girl on the beach was a suicide attempt. Were Ricky and Kim really talking about this stuff in 1981? It seems they were.
Much like ABBA’s The Day Before You Came (coincidentally also reviewed in the same Smash Hits as Child Come Away) these songs leave you with more questions than answers. I reimagined the ABBA classic as a Nordic Noir epic TV series. Child Come Away feels like a series of Broadchurch crammed into a 4 minute pop song.
I still didn’t have an answer so I Googled again. This time looking for anything behind the “she is mine” line.
‘Cos all they found were some marks in the sand
A message saying ‘She is mine’
Nobody touched her as she got in the car
And nobody dares to anytime
I found a book written in 2019 called “She’s Mine” by author Claire Lewis about a child who goes missing on a beach. Fascinating but nearly 40 years after Kim’s song surely no link there.
What about news at the time? Searching various permutations of “child found on beach 80’s” got me nowhere nearer.
I looked again. There are some very literal interpretations out there. “Girl goes missing” stuff all the way through to “She was abducted by aliens. Look at the video!” on a Kim Wilde forum. Nonsense, they’re just channelling Ashes To Ashes surely? Well that’s what I thought until I came across this article in the Guardian from 2018 to accompany the release of Kim’s album Here Come the Aliens.
Wilde doesn’t come across as blasé, just strikingly content. The only subject that makes her intently animated is, of all things, extra-terrestrial life. She considers herself psychic and is convinced that she saw a UFO above her back garden in 2009.
“I have had a lot of time to talk about it and think about it and I do think, obviously, that aliens have been here for ever. They’ve been watching us for ever. They’re in a situation where they know we have to evolve, in the way that we have to let our children grow up to a degree without our intervention. But we have to intervene sometimes, in case they kill themselves, so I think they’re reaching more of a point where they’re getting a bit, like: ‘We might actually have to do something here, guys. We might actually have to start raising the vibration in this planet for humans to understand that we’re real.’ Maybe they even are using me, to put out a pop record with them on it.”
She is not joking; her new album features aliens on the cover. “Maybe it’s just part of the plan. Maybe they’re just saying: ‘We’re going to have to get everyone used to the fact that we’re here.’ I mean, if they know so much, why wouldn’t they? They might think: actually, there’s that girl in Hertfordshire, the Kids in America girl. Yes, maybe we can get her, because she might get people to listen.”
Right. Not what I was expecting. I’m not one to judge if Kim Wilde tells me Aliens are here that will do for me. Anyway I feel like I’ve digressed too far and maybe I’ve discovered as much as I’m going to about a long forgotten 80s pop song. So whatever the story it remains Ricky, Marty and Kim’s to tell. Unless there’s somebody out there who knows more…
Guess all they found were some marks in the sand
A message saying 'She is mine'