Sting turned his back on songwriting for eight years after the release of Sacred Love in 2003 because he was tired of displaying his private life in the lyrics of his tunes.

The former The Police star has bounced back after his hiatus with the music for new Broadway stage show The Last Ship, but he admits he had no desire to write anything original in the years between.

Appearing on U.S. show Inside the Actors Studio on Thursday night (23Oct14), he explained, "I'd built my life upon this skill of matching rhyming couplets with melodies and, in the process, you have to dredge up stuff from your unconscious, all your history and put it on a page and then record it for the scrutiny of the world.

"I decided that I put so much of my private life on display that I was perhaps tired of it. I think for eight years I didn't write a song.

"I toured... I recorded other people's music... I did an album of winter music.. but I didn't have anything to show that was original."