- KIM WILDE Never Trust A Stranger (MCA)
- Week Ending 22nd October 1988
- 2 Weeks At #1
Are you sure we’re not in 1981 again? Dame Kim follows Duran Duran at the summit, with her second #1 of the year. You Came might have taken me unawares, but by the time Never Trust A Stranger was unleashed as its follow-up, I was very well acquainted with it as the next-best track on the Close album.
This time around, she was in full-on retrotastic mood, with a new-wave power pop anthem that had more in common with something Blondie might have done in 1980 than anything contemporary. Gurgling analogue synths, squealing guitars and a chorus belted out in the finest Kim Wilde tradition. Never Trust A Stranger plays to all her strengths, leaving all that try-hard dabbling with soul and funk in the mid-80s for dust.
The Great British public, too, were very keen on this single, giving her back-to-back Top 10 hits (again!). The hot streak would continue (on the UK Top 40) with the next 45, a fragile ballad entitled Four Letter Word, which in turn sent Close up to the giddy heights of #8 on the album chart. While it was quite a pretty track, I wasn’t so wowed and neither Four Letter Word nor Close‘s final single Love In The Natural Way caused much of a stir on my own Top 40.
Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes 