Nik Kershaw exploded onto the UK pop scene in 1984 as a solo artist. A string of global hit singles – including ‘Wouldn’t it Be Good’, ‘The Riddle’ and his biggest hit, ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ – helped to propel him to 62 weeks on the UK Singles Chart through 1984 and 1985 – beating every other solo artist, together with a crowd pleasing performance (and famously forgetting the words to ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’) at the legendary Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in ’85 – 35 years ago on July 13th.
After stepping out of the limelight to concentrate on writing and producing, Nik wrote Chesney Hawkes’s mega-hit ‘The One and Only’ and has collaborated with Elton John (including writing and producing one of the songs on the Duets album), Sia, Gary Barlow and Bonnie Tyler, whilst continuing to release his own well-reviewed studio albums, featuring his distinctive voice and highly personal lyrics. He has also continued to play festivals and tour consistently throughout the 4 decades he’s been a performer.
Nik has just released his first new music in 8 years, with a 6-track taster EP called ‘These Little Things’ – being a precursor to a full studio album, ‘Oxymoron’, coming in the Autumn. Nik has been working with Audio Network for some years now, and was encouraged by the global music company’s Chairman, Andrew Sunnucks, to work with them on this, his ninth studio album, and his first release since 2012.
Nik Kershaw is a masterful songwriter, blending a wonderful gift for soaring melodies with articulate wordplay and thoughtful lyricism. Recording this new material at Abbey Road Studios marked a return to a location with a lot of history for Nik. The room where this album was recorded was the same one in which he recorded ‘The One and Only’ with Chesney Hawkes. At Abbey Road, Nik says,
“You get the best studios, the best engineers, the best string section, the best brass players – and they bring everything together, with the mixing, to make [the record] sound like it’s all come from the same place.”
Having avoided writing about himself in his 80s heyday ‘because I wasn’t interesting enough!’, Nik says of these new tracks that,
“they’re probably all about me really. Some things are cathartic, but it’s never conscious,” whilst also confessing that, as with many of his songs, “often you only find out what they’re about retrospectively, and through talking to people about them.”
Nik Kershaw’s EP ‘These Little Things’ is out now through Audio Network, while his new album ‘Oxymoron’ will be released in September. Listen to ‘These Little Things’:
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