AceShowbiz - Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke struggled to find the will to write, record and perform following the death of his former partner in 2016.

The "High & Dry" singer was hit hard when cancer claimed the life of Rachel Owen, the mother of his two kids, and he tells the New York Times it was "difficult to work" as he dealt with the loss.

"God bless (longtime Radiohead producer) Nigel (Godrich) and the others for gently pushing me to keep working...," he explains. "Even though in moments of high stress it's very difficult to connect with music in that cathartic way, what I found was that you do connect. You end up being surprised by music. It catches you unawares."

"It's true that you can go through traumatic emotions, and your emotions can become dulled. Your way that you relate to the world becomes difficult. You go into a sort of paralysis. But because I kept working, because I kept listening to music, I never felt that paralysis."

Yorke and Owen ended their 23-year relationship a year before she died, and he recently gushed about his former partner as a mum during a Desert Island Discs interview.

"I can't believe they're (kids) anything to do with me. They're just such great people," he told the BBC. "When the kids' mum died, it was a very difficult period and we went through a lot. It was very hard. She suffered a great deal and my ambition is to make sure that we have come out of it all right, and I hope that's what's happening."