The Riddle - Solo Acoustic

Back in 1984, Nik Kershaw was under the pump. He'd just released an album (Human Racing) and his record company was chomping at the bit for another. With a tight deadline looming, Kershaw faced the daunting task of writing nine new songs in just two weeks! The pressure was on, but inspiration wasn't exactly flowing. After churning out a bunch of decent tracks, Kershaw's producer, Peter Collins, delivered some not-so-welcome feedback: "They're good, Nik, but there's no single here." Yikes! Needing a spark, Kershaw holed up and cranked out "The Riddle" in a mere 10 minutes. He included nonsensical lines like "near a tree by a river, there's a hole in the ground - where an old man of Aran goes around and around" simply as a placeholder to get the melody down. A week later, it was time to record. Kershaw slapped down the guide vocal with his gibberish lyrics, fully intending to rewrite them later. Except... they kinda stuck. "I tried a couple of times to rewrite the lyrics," he told the BBC. "But we just got so used to the nonsense and the way it sounded, nothing ever sounded right so we just stuck with the nonsense." Nothing captured the magic of the original babble. So, Kershaw made a cheeky decision. "I'll call it 'The Riddle' then people will think it's about something," he said. "Little did I know the kind of response I was going to get and I would have to explain, at some point, what The Riddle meant."

Nik Kershaw has said that he has received hundreds of "solutions" to the riddle that supposedly explain exactly what the song is about, even though the lyrics are more-or-less random and the song isn't actually about anything at all.

"The Riddle" was covered in 2000 as a dance song by Italian DJ Gigi D'Agostino with vocals by British singer Adam Austin. It reached the Top 10 in several countries including Canada, France, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland.