Time & Perspective Quote by Kim Wilde

There is a sting of self-indictment in Kim Wilde's line: love doesn’t just hurt, it becomes embarrassing when it’s paired with retreat. “My tears” frames emotion as something private and bodily, but “a waste of time” yanks it into the hard, modern language of efficiency. That clash is the point. Wilde isn’t romanticizing heartbreak; she’s auditing it. If you walk away, the feelings don’t become noble, they become squandered.

The conditional “if I turn away” makes the lyric less confession than ultimatum aimed at herself. Turning away is not simply leaving a person; it’s dodging the courage to be seen, to insist, to risk being refused. The subtext is that sadness can be a form of self-protection: you can cry and still keep control. Staying, by contrast, forces action. Wilde implies that emotion earns its meaning only when it is followed by commitment, confrontation, or at least presence.

As a pop lyric, it also carries the era’s particular emotional economy. In the 1980s, the glossy surfaces of new wave and synth-pop often hid raw desperation; Wilde’s persona was cool, composed, camera-ready. This line punctures that sheen without abandoning it. It keeps the beat of toughness while admitting vulnerability, then flips vulnerability into a demand: don’t let feeling be a performance. Either step toward the thing you claim to care about, or stop spending your life on tears that function as an alibi.