The Riddle (Nik Kershaw song)

"The Riddle" was a hit single for the popular music artist Nik Kershaw in 1984/1985. It reached number three on the UK Singles chart.

Lyrics

Originally Kershaw was going to record this track on its own without lyrics, but wrote some when prompted to do so. He has said himself that they weren't supposed to mean anything, they were just what came into his head when thinking of lyrics for the song. In his words, The Riddle is "nonsense, rubbish, bollocks, the confused ramblings of an 80's popstar."

Music video

The music video to "The Riddle" depicts Kershaw walking through a house shaped like a question mark, making his way through certain obstacles and looking through drawers while singing. At the beginning of the music video Nik is seen trying to get through a door with a screwdriver, it ends with the camera moving up away from Nik to reveal that the question mark is lying in the street, at which point a man in a green costume seen earlier in the video comes and picks it up. The green man is the Riddler, a villain from the Batman comics. Kershaw claimed the video was inspired by his love for post-modern artistic expressionism.