I’ve never forgiven Shakin’ Stevens for stopping Kim Wilde from claiming a UK number one with ‘Kids In America’ back in 1981. Kim cares less. She’s just released what she enthusiastically calls her favourite album of her near-40-year career.

You might think Kim’s 14th studio album Here Come The Aliens is a deliberately dramatic work of escapism, especially after seeing the striking B movie style artwork (painted by Kim’s niece, Scarlett); but it is actually part-inspired by – brace yourself – real events.

The album title is a nod to a real-life Close Encounter that occurred in Kim’s back garden in 2009 when she ‘spotted a UFO’ with her husband. She now believes aliens are keeping an eye on us because we don’t treat each other well. I met up with Kim in a London recording studio to chat about the new album and build a huge mashed potato mountain.

“My life has taken on quite a surreal quality these days, and I really like it like that,” Kim told me.

“There is this sort of parallel world that I feel I’m inhabiting since I saw the aliens and the lights in the sky. All these crazy things that have happened to me. I do feel like I’m living in multiple existences a lot of the time!”

It’s quite a beautiful moment catching Kim’s twinkle in her eye as she laughs about the absurdity of alien encounters. Back in the heady days of the ’80s, Kim would sometimes be accused of not smiling in photos or in TV appearances by journalists and TV presenters not getting her sultry demeanour, when in reality she would laugh often. You don’t need to see a YouTube video of her busking on a train, tipsy, to appreciate that she’s a tonic within the music industry. Much like I don’t need her to tell me she’s a ‘glass half-full kind of gal’, but she does. And I love that.

“It makes more sense when you live life in different dimensions, well, in your head anyway,” Kim explained.

“Somehow, the craziness of life is palatable. You need to have lots of different parts of you to take it all in. I don’t even know if I’m making any sense anymore. I’ve definitely lost it, haven’t I?”

There’s that twinkle again.

When she walked in to the famous RAK Studios last year to begin recording Here Come The Aliens (her first new album of original material to have a UK release since 1992), Kim felt instantly at home. Not only because RAK was where, in 1981, she recorded ‘Kids In America’ and ‘Chequered Love’, the seminal singles that made her famous at the age of 21, but because making music is what Kim has always done.

Of course, Kim Wilde is world-famous for her early ’80s success, but so much has happened since ‘Kids In America’, ‘View From A Bridge’, and – my favourite – ‘Cambodia’. Kim went on to support Michael Jackson on the European leg of his Bad tour in 1988, playing to over 2 million people over 5 months. She then supported David Bowie across Europe on his 1990 Greatest Hits stadium tour. Proud of her past, but focussed on the future, Kim has never stopped singing or selling out tours – she has played more shows in the past decade than ever before, finding fans in countries she never dreamed she’d visit and turning new generations on to her songs.

“The passion for it hasn’t gone anywhere,” Kim enthused. “It might have gone on vacation for a while or just had a little time out, especially when I got married and had children and got into horticulture. But now it’s back with a vengeance. There’s a very surreal quality to everything that’s going on right now for me.

“This is a time in my life when I never thought an album like this was possible,” Kim says. “I’m only a few years away from being sixty, it’s crazy! It’s mad to get this excited about hearing my record on the radio again.

“If you’d said to a twenty year-old ‘Kids In America’ Kim that I would release one of my finest albums at the age of almost sixty, I would never have believed it in a million years!”

Here Come The Aliens tour dates:

March 2018

30th Ipswich Regent Theatre

31st Southend Cliffs Pavilion

April 2018

2nd Glasgow Old Fruit Market

4th Bath The Forum

5th Torquay Princess Theatre

6th Yeovil Westlands

7th Bournemouth The Pavilion Theatre

11th Wrexham William Aston Hall

12th Preston The Guildhall

13th Sheffield Plug 15th York Barbican

16th Gateshead The Sage

19th Halifax The Victoria Theatre

20th Buxton Opera House

21st Birmingham Town Hall

22nd Salisbury City Hall

24th Hastings The White Rock Theatre

26th London Koko

30th Salford The Lowry

Ticket info ● Marriott Meets Kim Wilde is broadcast on Gaydio this Sunday from 11am | Kim plays Back To The ’80s cruise this May