Kershaw’s Finely Crafted Songs Get A Warm Reception In Norwich

Compared to many solo artists, Nik Kershaw may seem to be a slightly unlikely pop star.

Relatively undemonstrative, his stage manner is poles away from the attention-grabbing flamboyance that serves many artists so well.

Yes, as shown during his recent performance at Epic Studios in Magdalen Street, Norwich, Kershaw very much merits a place in the spotlight.

His sublime song writing skills helped him to an impressive run of hits in the mid 1980s and he has continued to pen excellent tracks even after the chart placings fell away.

Playing guitar himself, and backed by a second guitarist, a bassist, a keyboards player and a drummer, Kershaw’s first dip into his catalogue of major chart hits saw him perform the catchy “Wide Boy”.

Another highlight in the earlier part of the set was “The Riddle”, one of the three top five hits that he scored in 1984.

The show was about much more than Kershaw’s frenzied run of chart action, with other highlights including “Somebody Loves You”, a thoughtful and characteristically catchy meditation on the fragile nature of fame from his 1999 album 15 Minutes.

Indeed what was striking about this show was the sheer melodic nature of Kershaw’s output: his songs – and not just the tracks from his mid-1980s heyday – are so finely crafted that they are almost instantly hummable, even on first listen.

Wearing dark glasses and with a fine line in laid back stage banter, Kershaw continued to run through his back catalogue, both well-known and more obscure, to an appreciative crowd of perhaps 500 or so largely 30, 40, 50 and 60-somethings.

He was in fine voice, his vocals completely unchanged since the 1980s.

Another of his top-three hits, “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, was a highlight, while the main set ended with “I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, when, hands in the air, the crowd sang along enthusiastically.

When Kershaw came back for the encore, some in the crowd may have wondered what major hits he had left to play.

But he’d kept his biggest smash until the very end: “The One and Only”, taken to number one by Chesney Hawkes in 1991, was written and co-produced by Kershaw.

It was a rousing song to close an excellent show by one of the Britain’s best singer-songwriters.