ALISON MOYET - THE MUST-HAVE ALBUMS

Which women sum up British music in the Eighties? Surely Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Sade… but equally dominant in that decade was Geneviève Alison Jane Moyet of Basildon – or Alf, if you wanted the friendly diminutive. With her powerhouse vocals she was, in a way, the Adele of her day, while her gritty working-class soul girl demeanour made her the precursor to Amy Winehouse. This no-nonsense, down-toearth anti-glamour made her the very opposite of the era’s American superstars, and yet she was as integral a part of that decade as Madonna or Janet Jackson. Moyet emerged out of Seventies blues, pub rock and punk, and was a member of The Vandals, The Screamin’ Ab Dabs, The Vicars and The Little Roosters, none of which made much impression.
An advert she placed in Melody Maker led her to Vince Clarke, who she’d known since they were 11 years old. One fateful day, Clarke called Moyet at her parents’ house and asked if she’d sing on a demo he’d just written. Its name? Only You. The rest is history. The pair formed Yazoo and in so doing invented electronic soul. Despite having a relationship that Moyet has since compared to an arranged marriage – distant and functional – it proved the ideal vehicle for Clarke’s synth-based dance music and Moyet’s passionate vocals. By 1982, Yazoo were as much a part of the electro landscape as Clarke’s previous band Depeche Mode, The Human League, Soft Cell et al. But by 1983 it was all over for Her And Him Both: Yazoo split, leaving Clarke to form The Assembly and Erasure, and Moyet to go solo. Over the next three decades, she would have hits such as All Cried Out, Love Resurrection, Love Letters, That Ole Devil Called Love, Is This Love? and Weak In The Presence Of Beauty. She performed at Live Aid, won the Brit award for Best British Female in 1985 and 1988, and continued to record in the Nineties and beyond. In 2013, she made an album, the minutes, considered by many to be her best. And throughout it all there has been that voice, as warm and familiar as Yazoo’s early music was alien and cold; the booming, bluesy sound of the uncrowned Queen of Essex.

UPSTAIRS AT ERIC’S
1982
The birth of electronic soul
The fi rst Yazoo album offered a new
paradigm: fi re and ice, via Vince Clarke’s cool
electronics and Alison Moyet’s heated vocals.
It was named after producer EC Radcliffe’s
studios (and not the Liverpool punk-era
club, as some have said): Blackwing, where
Depeche Mode recorded their own debut
Speak & Spell. Several of the songs, without
the vocals, could almost have belonged to
Depeche Mode, only with Yazoo they had,
because of that voice, far greater emotional
heft. “An album of rich, dark passion, forever
burying the hoary old moan that electronics
and synthesisers will never be any good
because they don’t have a button on the
front that says ‘emotion’,” as Melody Maker
opined. The cover featured two mannequins
in a sparsely furnished loft, and two Top 3
singles in Don’t Go and Only You. It also
showcased Moyet’s writing skills, containing
no fewer than four of her compositions: the
forlorn Midnight, Goodbye 70’s (addressed to
trend-obsessed punks), piano ballad Winter
Kills and Bring Your Love Down (Didn’t I).
The album reached No. 2, which really was
not bad for a record dismissed by Clarke as
“a bit of a mishmash”.

YOU AND ME BOTH
1983
And then there was one
Yazoo’s second album was also their last.
Despite being even more successful than its
predecessor – it reached No. 1 in the UK – it
had an air of fi nality about it. It started
with the title, a pointed expression of the
duo’s increasingly estranged relationship,
and continued with the sleeve image of
two dalmatians fi ghting against a snowy
backdrop: they announced their split a few
weeks before the record’s release. Vince
Clarke evidently imagined his tenure with
Yazoo would be as short-lived as his one
with Depeche, while Moyet saw it as more
long-term. Further problems arose from their
differing working methods at Eric Radcliffe’s
Blackwing Studios: Clarke was meticulous
and strategic, Moyet looser and more
spontaneous. The resulting record wasn’t as
sombre as you might think, notwithstanding
the songs about war (Unmarked) and death
(And On). No, the music was as perkily
poignant as ever, although there was only
one track issued as a single – Nobody’s
Diary, which reached No. 3 – and Moyet
refused to sing the ironically jaunty Happy
People, the only Yazoo song on which Clarke
takes lead vocals.

ALF
1984
Adele, Schmadele
Today, you could argue that Alison Moyet’s
solo debut album sounds more dated than
her earlier work with Yazoo. However,
in a way, that’s a plus point: if you want
a perfectly focussed snapshot of where
commercial music was at in the period
between ZTT and PWL, then look no
further than this soul-pop masterclass. The
production, courtesy of Steve Jolley and
Tony Swain (Spandau Ballet, Bananarama,
Imagination), is so perfectly 1984 it’s hardly
true, all dazzling surfaces and walloping
drums. Love Resurrection, All Cried Out and
the Lamont Dozier-penned Invisible were
the big hits (No’s 10, 8 and 21 respectively),
but there were other, equally fi ne examples
of Moyet’s ruminations on the dark side of
love, notably Twisting The Knife and the
haunting Where Hides Sleep. The album
was her fi rst solo UK chart-topper, and it
fared well around the world, going Top 5
in Germany, Switzerland and Norway, and
even made the US Billboard top 50. The idea
that Moyet was too parochial for continental
tastes was roundly trashed by Alf, the record
that established her as one of the biggest
homegrown female artists of the decade.

THE MINUTES
2013
Back to the electronic future
Moyet’s eighth album marked a return to
her electronic roots. The 11 tracks were
co-written with Guy Sigsworth (Björk,
Madonna), her most compatible partner
since Clarke, and tinged with dubstep, house
and R&B (of the contemporary variety).
The Minutes (stylised as the minutes) found
Moyet in an electronic context for the fi rst
time since her days in Yazoo, but that didn’t
mean it looked backwards. If anything, it
was her most modern-sounding record for
decades. “It’s quite dark and defi nitely not
aimed at the charts,” she said. “It has an
electronic bias, but isn’t retro.” An album of
sedate jazz and soul covers this wasn’t, much
to the relief of Alf, who called it “easily my
happiest studio experience”, a strange thing
to say, perhaps, about an album of songs
on the subject of schizophrenia: Remind
Yourself and When I Was Your Girl were, she
explained, about “the opposing dialogues
within oneself”. The results – including the
singles When I Was Your Girl, Love Reign
Supreme and Changeling – were dramatic
and atmospheric, not to mention her most
successful for years: it was her highestcharting
album since 1987’s Raindancing.