Pop star Nik Kershaw reveals writer's block

Nik Kershaw's hits include Wouldn't It Be Good, The Riddle and I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me

Pop star Nik Kershaw has described how he spent hours "staring at the wall" with writer's block.

The 1980s heartthrob, releasing his first new music for eight years, said his songs came in "fits and starts".

Kershaw, known for hits such as I Won't Let The Sun Go Down on Me and Wouldn't It Be Good, has released a six-track EP called These Little Things.

Speaking to BBC Radio Suffolk, the star, who lives in the county, admitted he had experienced "barren years".

"I had couple of years, actually, where nothing happened - I'd just go into the studio and stare at the wall for eight hours, then come home again," he said.

Nik Kershaw grew up in Ipswich and went to what is now Northgate High School in the town

Kershaw, who wrote The One and Only for Chesney Hawkes, said at other times he "went through a phase of just sitting down with an acoustic guitar and... just deciding I'm going to write a song all day, whether it's rubbish or not".

"I'll write and complete it and then forget about it, which I did, and about two months later I came back to those songs, and a good five or six of them I think made it on the album."

The EP is a taster of a full 16-track studio album, Oxymoron, which is expected to come out later in the year.

'Bit of a monster'

The singer, who went to school in Ipswich, said he did not feel under pressure to produce new songs.

"I'm aware of the fact that there are people out there interested in hearing them, which is great, but... it wouldn't have taken me eight years if I thought I was under that much pressure," he said.

"I'm kind of enjoying life outside music, just pottering about in the garden and walking dogs and playing a bit of bad golf and stuff like that."

He said he had not been focused on finishing an album until he started talking to his friend Andrew Sunnucks, who has a company called Audio Network.

"So in the end it's Audio Network that are releasing the things and they kind of drove the end of the process; they kind of helped me finish it off," he said.

"It did kind of turn into a bit of a monster... My biggest problem is knowing when a song, a record, is finished... and then someone says 'How about strings?'... and then there's horns on top of that and it just becomes this huge thing."