Alison Moyet - A soul voice at the court of pop

Becoming famous is a really shocking thing

especially when you don’t have aspirations to it

(Alison Moyet)

Everyone loves Alison Moyet. Or rather, there comes a point in life when everyone should learn to. Not only for her music, although, judging by album sales alone, there are more than twenty-five million good reasons to do so. And not only for her voice, that unmistakable blues contralto that has long been a point of pride for the whole of British women in the music industry, for better or worse. But if there's a moment when Alison Moyet truly wins you over, it's when you start poking around behind the scenes and discover that, far from the spotlight, lies an existence that's anything but that of a seasoned popstar, and a rather troubled relationship with success, despite an enviable career spanning more than thirty years. It's impossible, then, not to identify with her battles for artistic independence and her many personal struggles, tied to an oversize build. Indeed, it's not only her performances on stage that catch the eye, but also her size. At the peak of her success we'd left her in a hefty UK 22 (or Italian 54), back in the days of "Don't Go" and "Love Resurrection", mid-Eighties. Today we find her in great shape, weighing less than half as much and wearing a slim UK 10 (roughly an Italian 42). "I've lost too much weight, I'm working hard to put a few pounds back on..." she jokes, though not entirely.

Gente di Basildon

Basildon, Essex, the Seventies.

“Being a punk in Basildon back then could be pretty dangerous,” Alison recalls. “It was all about tribes — there were skinheads, Mods, rockers and punks. The first thing you did when you met someone was check out their shoes: if they had pointed shoes and straight-leg trousers, they were one of yours, but if you wore the wrong shoes or the wrong cut of trousers, you'd get slapped right there in the street. I didn't have many problems with that, partly because I was big and sturdy and came from a pretty aggressive family of French farmers: my father was a real street-fighter, he communicated by slamming his fists on the kitchen table. So I wasn't easily intimidated, I always walked a step ahead of the others and I was the instigator of my own gang.”

Geneviève Alison Jane Moyet was born on 18 June 1961, specifically in Billericay, a small town in Essex, to a French father and an English mother, but spent her childhood and teenage years in nearby Basildon, where she first attended Markhams Chase Junior School, then Nicholas Comprehensive (now James Hornsby School). Among her classmates there were two very young Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher (Depeche Mode), as well as Perry Bamonte, future guitarist of the Cure. Later, at college, she would find herself side by side with Paul Webb, bassist of Talk Talk.

In short, it was clear from her school days that her destiny lay in music. So at just sixteen she decided to drop out of school and started working, first as a shop assistant, then for a cosmetics company, and later as a piano tuner. Meanwhile she began singing with a few bands on the local circuit — this was the late Seventies, and at the time she went by the name Alf, performing with various outfits around south Essex. Chief among them were the Vandals, led by guitarist Robert Marlow, another former schoolmate (also enlisted in a few embryonic pre-Depeche projects, and Vince Clarke's best friend). It was a punk-rock-style band, with Moyet rounding out the trio of backing singers alongside her inseparable friends Kim Forey and Sue Paget. Each time they'd take on a different drummer and play gigs in pubs, hotels or outdoor parties. “Back then the only thing I cared about was punk, though more as a way of life than as music: finding myself in a bunch of misfits I felt a real kinship with. I was the most rebellious one — we lived in a town with no culture and no money, there wasn't much else to do except hang out in car parks or open fields, playing and singing, mostly just to keep ourselves entertained. Everyone in Basildon was in a band, whether or not they could actually play an instrument. That, really, was the true joy of punk.”

Once the Vandals experience and the punk season were over, Alison started singing with Screamin' Ab Dabs. This time the shift was to rhythm and blues — her voice, after all, allowed her to move nimbly between genres, and blues in particular seemed the most natural fit for her powerful, deep-toned vocal style, which would go on to become her trademark. Soon after she joined the Vicars for a few rehearsal sessions, and finally the Little Roosters, a glam rock band then touring behind its sole self-titled album (produced, among others, by Joe Strummer, who added piano to several tracks on the studio version).

Meeting Vince Clarke: Yazoo is born

Tired of treading the narrow Basildon-Southend-Canvey Island triangle that fed the local pub-rock scene, Alison decided to place an ad in Melody Maker in search of a new band, once again blues-oriented, her natural vocal habitat.

“Female singer looking for a rootsy blues band”.

That's the exact wording of the ad published in the music magazine. Vince Clarke answered it, in what she herself would call an extraordinary case of serendipity — that curious trick of fate whereby you go looking for one thing and find exactly its opposite: in this case, hoping to put together a quiet rhythm 'n' blues band and instead finding herself catapulted, almost overnight, onto Top of the Pops and to number 2 on the UK album charts.

Vince Clarke already had some experience in this regard: at the time he had just left Depeche Mode, of which he had been a co-founding member and for whom he had written the first three singles, “Dreaming Of Me”, “New Life” and “Just Can't Get Enough”. But he had kept the score of an unreleased ballad tucked away in a drawer: it was called “Only You”, and it fit Moyet's warm soul delivery like a glove. His label, Mute Records, heard the demo and was thrilled with the result, so they turned it into a single that exceeded even the rosiest of expectations.

It's March 1982, and Yazoo is born — a duo that over the next two years would build a huge following, buoyed by the happy marriage of simple but surefire electronics (Clarke) and powerhouse vocal performances (Moyet). The exact same formula — “synths plus a female blues voice” — proved a winning combination precisely because it was unprecedented within the otherwise thriving electro-pop scene of the moment: the only act to closely mirror it was Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox's Eurythmics, albeit with slightly different timing and approach.

In July of that same year, Yazoo was back at the top of the charts thanks to a second hit titled “Don't Go”, in which the typical synthetic textures of synth-pop merged with a galvanizing dance beat, with Moyet's warm, bluesy voice creating an unsettling yet highly effective contrast. It was the prelude to their first album, Upstairs At Eric's, released shortly after to predictably great success. The title refers to Eric Radcliffe's Blackwing Studios, where the album was recorded. Vince had already been a regular there during his Depeche days — it's where “Speak & Spell” was born, along with quite a few other early Mute Records productions.

Originally conceived as the b-side to “Only You”, the claustrophobic, propulsive “Situation” became the third single instead, finally launching the duo onto the North American market: they found a warm welcome there too, though the band's name had to be tweaked to Yaz due to legal disputes with the US label Yazoo Records.

The album boasts other band classics, including “Bad Connection”, which echoes the gait of the Depeche-esque “Dreaming Of Me”, woven through with ringing telephones and snippets of conversation, and “In My Room”, which makes curious use of spoken word in service of a bizarre electro-punk blend, alongside the delicate ballad “Winter Kills” and the more experimental “I Before E Except After C”, where the synth fuels a paranoid atmosphere amid whispers and grotesque laughter.

All told, it's a debut to remember — the problem being that there was no relationship whatsoever between the two of them. “We were never friends, we just happened to be thrown together, we barely spoke to each other, and we never once had a beer together,” Alison would explain. “Vince would go into the studio in the morning, I'd go in the evening — often we'd record without even running into each other. Our personalities were polar opposites: me, an aggressive Frenchwoman, him, an all-too-silent and reserved Englishman, passive — under those conditions there wasn't even any fun to be had in arguing.”

On top of that, their different artistic ambitions and leanings soon lead to an irreparable rift between the two. Clarke, a true master of electro-pop, fully intends to keep pursuing dancefloor success, with instantly catchy melodies and radio-friendly tunes; Moyet, on the other hand, isn't interested in success at all. "I wanted to try something deeper, more committed, more personal. Becoming famous had already been a shocking enough experience in itself," Alison would later add - though, to be fair, in several interviews given years later she would still make a point of thanking her colleague, without whom... "Without him," she'd admit candidly, "I wouldn't be where I am now."

In any case, given the pressure and the agreements made with the label, the two keep working together for a few more months, so at the end of the year the EP The Other Side Of Love/Ode To Boy is released, and in July 1983, finally, their second and last album, You And Me Both, arrives - a highly ironic title given their status as a couple living separately under the same roof.

The album not only manages to match the success of its predecessor, but goes even further, reaching number one on the UK album charts, driven by the lovely single "Nobody's Diary", another triumph for Moyet, who agonises over her romantic torments while Clarke embroiders his smooth synth textures.

The formula is the same as on the debut: easy jingles, skilfully painted by Clarke, and Moyet's extraordinary vocal performances - she also writes half the lyrics, including "Nobody's Diary" itself, as well as "Anyone", "And On" and the intense "Good Times", where the vocalist delivers one of her most aggressive performances. Vince, meanwhile, writes the more personal "Happy People", dedicated to the Liberal Party, in which his mother was active at the time, though without ever taking a political stance himself. Alison, however, refuses to sing it, so for the first and only time, the lead vocal on a Yazoo track belongs to Clarke.

In short, the tension between the two is at its peak, and given these conditions the result achieved is all the more surprising, considering that You And Me Both was written and produced in a rush. Then again, it's a historical moment when it really takes very little to spark something special, and anything coming out of a synth seems to exude a new, original, interesting sound. On top of that, the duo's split had been publicly announced even before the album's release, of which "Nobody's Diary" would remain the only single taken from it.

Once the album's promotion was over, the story of Yazoo comes to an end, to the relief of them both, after eighteen months of forced cohabitation. Each goes their own way without too many regrets, pursuing their own style and artistic vision. In another twist of fate, this time it's Vince Clarke who places an ad in Melody Maker, looking for a new singer: he's answered by a women's shoe salesman with a passion for singing, a certain Andy Bell, an old fan of his. The two would go on to launch a successful artistic partnership that, in the years to come, would see them become regular fixtures on the British charts. But that's another story - the story of Erasure. Alison Moyet's story, on the other hand, heads down the path of an equally long-lasting and fortunate solo career, one that would see her become one of the most sought-after and appealing vocalists on the international scene.

Alison's golden years: 1984-1987

"Becoming famous so suddenly left me in real difficulty - all my contacts with the record companies came through Vince, I'd never cultivated any of my own, not least because I'd never wanted to pursue a solo career. We had a number one album and were recognised everywhere, but I was completely alone, I had no friends, because of my own character."

But when it came down to it, the setback wasn't actually that hard to overcome - just enough time to roll up her sleeves, and Alison is signed by Columbia Records, who pair her with the production/songwriting team of Steve Jolley and Tony Swain and release her debut solo album, Alf (a nod to Moyet's childhood nickname).

It's 1984, the echo of her Yazoo successes hasn't faded yet, and so her solo debut lands with a bang. The album, in fact, goes straight in at number one on the British charts, propelled by the single "Love Resurrection", a pulsing dance number paired with a deep, powerful vocal performance, and by the subsequent hits "All Cried Out", another scratchy soul growl seasoned with precious melodic lines and skilful sophisti-pop arrangements, and "Invisible", built on an instantly catchy refrain and a lyric of bleak melancholy.

Jolley and Swain, fresh at the time from the resounding success of Spandau Ballet's "True", forge a new sound for Alison, one that departs completely from her Yazoo days and veers towards a more sophisticated, singer-songwriter-leaning pop. From this came the aching ballad "For You Only" (another standout on the record, released as a fourth single in some European countries), the raw "Honey For The Bees" and the breezier, more sinuous "Twisting The Knife".

The lyrics deal with love, sex and friendship in a frank, direct manner. The album is entirely co-written by Moyet in collaboration with the duo, with the exception of "Invisible", penned by the legendary Motown producer Lamont Dozier, who gave her what would become her single biggest hit on the American market.

This is the peak of Alison's fame: her vocal style is rich, intense and emotional, earning her illustrious comparisons to artists of the calibre of Sade, Annie Lennox and Tina Turner, or to her own idols Janis Joplin and Dusty Springfield.

In short, Moyet is by now a strong and authentic presence on the music scene, so in 1985 she performs at Live Aid, first alongside Paul Young (they duet on "That's The Way Love Is"), then returns to the stage a second time for a curious off-script moment, when during the performance of "Let It Be" Paul McCartney's microphone cuts out and she has to go back on stage to provide some emergency backing vocals, alongside Bob Geldof, David Bowie and Pete Townshend.

It's a particularly golden moment: she wins the Brit Award for Best British Female Artist and celebrates with a splendid cover of Billie Holiday's classic "That Ole Devil Called Love", which reaches number two on the British charts and remains to this day her best-ever commercial result among UK singles (the track was not included on any album; its b-side was "Don't Burn Down The Bridge", written by fellow Motown composer Ronnie Miller).

Her triumphant 1985 closes with "A Very Special Christmas", a charity compilation of Christmas songs performed by the biggest stars of the moment, including Sting, Pretenders, U2, Whitney Houston and many others; Alison contributes her own personal rendition of "The Coventry Carol".

The success of Alf, however, still doesn't fully satisfy her, so she sets out in search of new producers to try something different, so that the next album sounds less glossy and more grounded.

Raindancing comes out in 1987 and proves to be the real test, which it passes with flying colours. It's an album that's less explosive overall, but in some ways even more mature than its predecessor Alf. It too earns major success with both audiences and critics, and delivers one classic after another in Moyet's discography, starting with the lead single "Is This Love?", co-written with Jean Guiot — a pseudonym concealing the mind behind Eurythmics, Dave Stewart, who at the time was also credited in the same way on several tracks by Shakespears Sister (another fairly successful pop act, whose vocalist is his wife Siobhan Fahey, formerly of Bananarama).

The soft "Weak In The Presence Of Beauty", which pulses to the heartbeat of Alison's newborn son, is instead a cover of the British soul-jazzy group Floy Joy: it will remain one of her biggest hits, alongside later singles "Ordinary Girl" (with possible homosexual references) and, above all, "Sleep Like Breathing", a romantic ballad sung together with David Freeman, which will curiously remain the first and last studio duet of Moyet's many years as a solo artist. The song is written by Freeman himself along with Joseph Hughes; the two had together formed the new wave duo new wave Lover Speaks and are, among other things, the authors of the original version of "No More I Love You's", which, picked up by Annie Lennox about a decade later, would become a worldwide hit (from the 1995 album "Medusa"). Also notable are "Blow Wind Blow" and "Glorious Love", in which the English singer's warm, soul-inflected vocal stamp still shines through. Rounding things out, with both class and craft, are "Without You", "You Got Me Wrong" and "When I Say (No Giveaway)".

Raindancing is followed by the release of "Love Letters", another highly successful non-album single that in 1987 brings a happy close to the first phase of a career that has so far been smooth sailing — trouble will arrive punctually a few years later, when, stubborn and resolute in wanting to take full artistic control of her own work, she will opt for more intimate and daring choices, all at the expense of sales, to the despair of her label.

The clashes with Sony and the long silence

"The problem with record labels is that they think about how to sell a record before anyone has even written it. I was never the type chasing fame or money, I would have preferred to have five or ten percent of my audience, but have it be more sincere and interested in who I really am", Alison explains; after the success of Raindancing, she takes a long break from the scene.

At that time she's going through a divorce from her husband Malcolm Lee and has a second daughter, Alex, so she feels the need to stop and take stock of everything happening around her. It's a period of crisis and deep reflection, in which she reconsiders all her beliefs about life, including her own personal and professional ambitions. She emerges from it stronger and even more determined to take full control of her career, so she starts writing songs again and lays the groundwork for what will become her third album.

Hoodoo (1991) breaks a four-year silence and marks a decisive change of direction from the lighter, more disenchanted format of her previous records. It's in fact a more complex, dark, introspective project, but the result finally seems to fully repay her efforts. The new musical direction she's taken goes down very well with critics, who go as far as calling it "her best album" and praise what will prove to be a point of no return in Moyet's career, as she has by then definitively shed the role of chart-topping popstar to gradually turn into a refined songwriter.

The album marks the beginning of a long and persistent collaboration with Pete Glenister; the two co-write most of the songs, starting with the bold first single "It Won't Be Long", which, despite a Grammy nomination for best song of 1991, fails to crack the top 40 — as do the following singles "Wishing You Were Here" (featuring English musician Kirsty McColl on backing vocals) and "This House", a dusted-off track from the Yazoo era never released before due to a veto imposed by the label.

Also worth noting are the elegant "Back Where I Belong", the title track "Hoodoo" and "My Right A.R.M.", dedicated to her eldest daughter (whose full initials are A.R.M.).

Alison declares herself enthusiastic about one of her own works for the first time, even though the album reaches only number eleven at home — not a bad result, but still far from her usual standards. Her label Columbia Records, on the other hand, is rather less pleased with the noticeable drop in sales and starts turning up its nose. It's the beginning of a long tug-of-war between the two parties, with Moyet refusing to budge an inch from her increasingly firm artistic stances.

The following album, Essex (a clear tribute to her home county), comes out in 1994 and follows along similar lines to its predecessor. It's a rather personal work, steeped in dark, reflective, melancholic atmospheres. This time vocals and guitars are given greater emphasis, resulting in a rawer, less contrived sound that moves comfortably from rock to the deepest soul music. Once again, though, the result doesn't please Columbia (by then absorbed into the Sony giant), which, before finalising the album, pushes for the songs to be re-recorded and, above all, for a series of bonus tracks and remix versions to be added to the tracklist, in order to make the package more marketable. So, for example, the acoustic ballad "Whispering Your Name" (written by American musician Jules Shear and released as the second single) is reworked into a dance version by friend-turned-foe Vince Clarke, brought back in specifically by the label to give the product more visibility, but without the hoped-for results. The same goes for the other singles "Falling", "Getting Into Something" and "Ode To Boy II", the latter a sequel to an old Yazoo-era track, here handed over to the expert DJ/producer Junior Vasquez (who had already worked with Madonna, Cher and Cyndi Lauper).

The record label's efforts, however, aren't enough: Essex remains to this day Moyet's biggest commercial flop, though she doesn't seem to worry about it much — if anything, she presses on, ever more convinced of her own instincts and of what she wants from her music. This leads to a head-on clash with Sony, which for its part isn't joking around: first it cuts the promotional budget for her albums, then it forces a new period of silence on her, this time an imposed one, which will last eight very long years. Meanwhile, the major quickly recoups its investment by releasing the greatest hits set Singles, which debuts straight at number 1 in 1995 and finally achieves the commercial result it was hoping for (although, truth be told, the two new tracks "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Solid Wood" leave no mark on the charts).

The experiment is repeated in 1996, when the same Singles is relaunched on the market as a double CD, with the addition of Live (No Overdubs), a bonus disc gathering a series of live performances given by Moyet that same year at the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow.

Eight years is no small amount of time, but her exile from the scene doesn't dent Alison's confidence or stubbornness, as she keeps her voice warmed up by lending it to other artists in the meantime. This leads to a handful of collaborations with The Lightning Seeds, Tricky and Ocean Colour Scene (featured respectively on the albums “Jollification”, “Nearly God” and the self-titled “Ocean Colour Scene”). Still in 1995, Moyet appears on the popular show Later with Jools Holland, where alongside Sinead O’Connor she sings backing vocals on “Where Is A Woman To Go?” for what will turn out to be one of the last television appearances by British legend Dusty Springfield, before her death in 1999.

Shortly afterward she takes part in the European leg of Lilith Fair, the kind of touring all-female festival dreamed up by Canadian musician Sarah McLachlan. Finally, in 2001, comes her stage debut, playing the matron “Mama” Morton in the musical “Chicago”, which runs for six months at London's West End Theatre (she'll repeat the experience in 2006, when alongside her friend Dawn French she co-stars in the play “Smaller”, this time at the Lyric Theatre).

In short, Alison keeps herself busy however she can until the long-awaited year 2002 finally arrives, when she breaks free of her contractual chains with Sony and is finally free to sign elsewhere. Her new label, Sanctuary Records, welcomes her with open arms and already knows exactly how to handle her, granting her ample creative control and complete compositional freedom. Within a few weeks, out comes Hometime, her fifth studio album, celebrating her long-awaited return “home” — that is, to the recording studio.

Coming home

Hometime is a grand-scale comeback: fan enthusiasm and glowing reviews seal the unexpected success of an album that instantly becomes one of the most acclaimed of 2002. At home it quickly goes gold, Alison Moyet is back in the top five of the sales charts, and she receives her now-customary nomination for Best British Female at the Brit Awards, as well as a prestigious Mercury Music Prize nod.

Hometime yields three singles, “Should I Feel That It’s Over”, “Do You Ever Wonder” and “More” (the only one of the three to get a video). This time the album flirts with new trip-hop sounds, and it's no coincidence that it was recorded in Bristol, under the stealth production of the Insects (Tim Norfolk and Bob Locke), true gurus of the genre and trusted collaborators of Massive Attack and Goldfrapp, as well as Madonna, who at that very time was starting to flirt with a more updated, fashionable sound.

In 2004 comes Voice, a covers collection specifically designed to showcase Moyet's vocal qualities, where she delivers a number of fine interpretations, in both English and French, of many of her favourite songs. The tracklist ranges from Bizet's “Je Crois Entendre Encore” to the traditional Scottish folk tune “The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies- O!”, and from Burt Bacharach's “God Give Me Strength” to “La Chanson Des Vieux Amants” by Belgian artist Jacques Brel, of whom her father was a great admirer.

Voice too earns her a gold record within less than a month of release, proof of her renewed (or rather, never really lost) appeal on the international stage. The album is conceived and produced with the invaluable help of her neighbour, musician Anne Dudley (best known as a former member of Art of Noise, though she also has an extensive solo career, especially in film scoring). Rounding off the project, the DVD “One Blue Voice” is released in 2006, presenting the album in video form.

In October 2007 comes The Turn, her seventh studio album, which however marks a small step backward in an otherwise happy professional run. Alison returns to work with Pete Glenister; the album includes a few songs written for Smaller (the stage play in which, as mentioned, she's co-starring at the time) alongside the two singles “One More Time” and “A Guy Like You”, neither of which achieves the hoped-for results, while the album itself stalls at an anonymous number twenty-one on the charts.

Surprisingly, and with shrewd commercial timing, in 2008 Moyet briefly reunites with Vince Clarke for a Yazoo reunion, which over thirteen weeks takes a tellingly titled Reconnected Tour across Europe and America. These are their first shows together in twenty-five years, and they'll also turn out to be the last, save for a brief encore at the Short Circuit Music Festival, staged in 2011 by Mute Records at London's Roundhouse, where Moyet appears onstage as a guest shortly before Erasure's set, joining Vince Clarke to sing three Yazoo songs, “Nobody’s Diary”, “Ode To Boy” and “Don’t Go”.

But there's no room for illusions: in an interview given shortly before the show, Alison states, “99.9 per cent, this will be the last time you'll see us together”.

2009 is once again time for celebration, as it marks her twenty-fifth anniversary as a solo artist, so Sony releases The Best Of: 25 Years Revisited, a collection of her best songs personally selected by Alison, which she marks during the winter months with a tour of England and Ireland.

In 2010 she performs alongside Wilko Johnson at Camden's Koko Club, on the occasion of the launch of “Oil City Confidential”, Julien Temple's documentary about the music scene of Canvey Island and in particular about Dr Feelgood, whom Johnson himself fronted back in the Seventies: Alison had often opened for them in her days with the Vandals and Screamin’ Ab Dabs.

Also in 2010, she lends her voice to “The Man That Got Away”, featured on Jools Holland's album “Rocking Horse”, as well as to the electro single “Waiting” by My Robot Friend.

In 2012 she's invited by Nile Rodgers to perform at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival, where she sings “Stop Me” accompanied by Rodgers himself, Johnny Marr and Mark Ronson, while toward the end of that same year she wraps up a trio of sold-out dates at the famous Ronnie Scott’s, the jazz club in London's Soho district, as part of a personal project titled “Rare And Obscure”, in which she performs some of her lesser-known songs, drawn mostly from her more recent catalogue.

In 2013, finally, came the new The Minutes, six years on from its predecessor The Turn. It's a clear return to her roots, underlined by extensive use of electronic instrumentation, here naturally redesigned in a modern, up-to-date key by new producer and co-writer Guy Sigsworth, who applied the same fashionable sounds that he was using in those very days for other projects commissioned by Bjork, Robyn, Kate Havnevik and Goldie, but also by somewhat older stars like Madonna, Seal and David Sylvian. “It took so long precisely because Guy was really busy,” Alison says, “and also because it took me a few years to find a label that would let me really do what I wanted, at a time when everyone was much more interested in having me record covers albums or best ofs.” This time the album was released by Cooking Vinyl in May 2013, to the delight of some critics, who welcomed it perhaps a little too enthusiastically as “her best work ever.” What's certain is that it reached No. 5 on the charts, giving Alison her biggest commercial success since Raindancing.

The nod to the Eighties sound is strong, but in a darker, more experimental guise; from these premises come “Apple Kisses,” the first single “When I Was Your Girl,” and the splendid overture “Horizon Flame,” while “Right As Rain” and “Love Reign Supreme” are clearly dance-oriented, holding their own against newer names like Roisin Murphy, Goldfrapp and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, always balanced between house and dubstep, but with a vintage flavour. Closing the record is “Changeling,” a single offered as a free download on her official website. It was originally meant to give the album its title, later changed at Moyet's own request to The Minutes, to avoid confusion with the near-identical “The Changeling” by Toyah Wilcox, from 1982.

That same October was followed by a tour of England and Ireland, documented on 2014's Minutes And Seconds – Live.

Behind the scenes with Alison Moyet

Today Alison Moyet is over fifty, a woman completely renewed, inside and out; it's hard to believe she's the same person who, more than a quarter of a century ago, was scrutinised daily under a magnifying glass, and certainly not only for her vocal performances. “The media's obsession with my silhouette has always been relentless,” Alison recalls, who after a long absence returned to the public eye in 2001 having lost an impressive amount of weight, on the occasion of the musical “Chicago.” Her dress size more than halved, and her new look made her practically unrecognisable: the maxi-dresses and long scarves of the Yazoo era are now a distant memory. “I didn't do it out of vanity,” she's keen to point out, “but for health reasons, also because at my age the next task awaiting me is becoming a grandmother, and besides, I didn't like the idea of growing old as an obese woman, unable to fit into someone else's arms.” In truth, she had already undergone breast reduction surgery in 1989, going from a G cup to a D, with no intention whatsoever of having further cosmetic surgery in the future, not least because “personally I think women look better with a bit more curve to them, and that they become even more interesting as they age,” adds Alison, who doesn't enjoy returning to a subject that has always intrigued onlookers far more than it has her. “Even as a teenager I was often insulted and shunned because of how I looked, but I did nothing to change it – if anything, I tried to make myself as ugly and unattractive as possible, as an act of defiance. I had no interest at all in socialising, not then and not since. Even though I grew up and became famous, my friendships today are still the same handful from childhood in the council houses of Basildon.” The exception is comic actress Dawn French, another famous plus-size woman and one half of the English comedy duo French & Saunders. Dawn and Alison had met years earlier on the set of the videos for “Love Letters” and “Whispering Your Name,” and found themselves together on stage in 2006 in “Smaller,” when director Kathy Burke staged a comedy whose title played on the size of its two leading ladies – although, to be fair, by the time it reached the stage Moyet's own weight had already headed in the opposite direction. “But psychologically I'll always be a fat girl, that's how I grew up and that's exactly how I feel inside.”

The high point of her career remains the one she lived through in the Eighties: the hits “Love Resurrection” and “All Cried Out” even showcased her songwriting talents, while the jazzy covers “That Ole Devil Called Love” and “Love Letters” established her as a crooner and interpreter of timeless classics too.

In any case, across pop, blues and R&B, her sharpest instrument remains her voice, so much so that between 1984 and 1987 she was Britain's biggest female solo star, at least judging by the sales boom of the Alf/Raindancing pairing. Then, right at the peak of her success, came the long bout of depression that would last a decade.

Fame and pressure that grow too much, too fast, can play nasty tricks, and the rest was down to her own difficult temperament and lack of social ease. It would be an awkward encounter with her idol Elvis Costello that set everything off. “I met him backstage at one of his concerts, I was trying to strike up a conversation but the only words that came out of my mouth were, 'You took your time with that one, didn't you?' I don't think he even noticed, but from that day on I never listened to him again, nor did I ever accept another invitation within the music business – it hurt too much. I've tried many times in my life to socialise, but I've always failed. Even in Basildon people used to keep their distance from me, they saw me as a strange girl, a troublemaker, a junkie. That encounter changed my professional and social outlook for the next 25 years.” Before long Alison began avoiding every social occasion, so anxiety and depressive episodes took over and triggered a severe form of agoraphobia, which soon reduced her to a state of virtual seclusion and imprisonment in her own home: “I even avoided eye contact with people, when someone knocked at the door I'd hide inside the wardrobe,” she would later recall.

Alison tried to go out for the first time in five years, but it didn't go very well. “I went out for dinner with some friends, and inside the restaurant a guy recognised me and stood up: 'Hey, Alison Moyet! Sing us a song!' I refused and he started insulting me, then made as if to come over to us... That was the problem with being so famous, someone sees a fat girl and straight away... 'that's Alison Moyet!' That whole thing set me back another five years.”

The long period of silence imposed by Sony certainly didn't work in her favour, not least because it forced her to stay away from the stage and the recording studio, when in fact “I only felt at ease in front of a microphone, because it's the one place in the world where I know exactly what's expected of me.”

Another of the very few places she frequented during those dark days was the home of an old childhood friend, where Alison would meet her current husband, David Ballard, a social worker for disabled adults. It was he who, little by little, pulled her out of the tunnel, starting with small things, like taking her on Saturdays to watch Southend United play. The two are big fans, and even today they can often be found in the stands at Roots Hall, the home ground of the team for which Alison also wrote the official anthem, “Blue.” “I feel good there, I like the feeling of being just an ordinary person, one face among many, blending into the crowd. Southend is a special place for me, it always feels like coming home, it's where I played my first concert at sixteen, and it's there, in Essex, that my family still lives today.”

Step by step she began to confront her fears, and little by little she came out the other side. “There simply comes a moment when you decide you're tired of being depressed. Having children saved me: when you're alone you can do as you please and let yourself go, but when your child wants to get up, you have to get up too, there's no way around it, you have no other choice.”

Alison has three children: Joe, Alex and Caitlin (by three different men), and since 2013 she has lived in Brighton with her husband David. Today she has found balance and peace of mind, and is finally at ease with herself and with the whole world. Looking back on her personal struggles, she even counts her blessings for the neuroses and the troubles with her labels that kept her off the scene for years. “The silences and the long breaks meant I never overworked and strained my voice the way so many others have,” the English singer explains with a hint of pride – she's always had the habit of having a sip of brandy before going on stage, partly to warm up her vocal cords, partly to calm her nerves. “Even now I still get the occasional moment of breathlessness, but there's nothing left that frightens me, except the thought that something might go wrong for my children.” And as for possible heirs, in particular Adele, often compared to Moyet partly because of a similarly curvy build, she's blunt: “I'd be careful about saying that Adele today reminds me of myself in 1985. Back then, for a pop star, turning towards jazz and soul was a far more difficult and radical choice than it would be today.”

To close, one last little curiosity concerning Vince Clarke: “Everyone thinks I first met him thanks to that ad in Melody Maker, but actually I'd known him since we were eleven years old – on Saturday mornings in Basildon there were music lessons, and he and his two brothers used to come too, I think they played the violin. All three of them were blond, with hair so fair it was almost white, they looked to me like three little ducklings.”

Still going strong: Other and Key

A winning team shouldn't be changed, and Alison Moyet must have remembered that very well when she sat down to plan the follow-up to 2013's successful The Minutes. Confirmed once again is "Bristolian" producer Guy Sigsworth at the console, confirmed again is independent label Cooking Vinyl for distribution, and also — and this is certainly the most positive aspect — the electronic mood, varied and never uniform though it is, which gave her renewed creative energy after decades spent under the radar, along with the thrill of a UK chart placing she'd been missing for ages. Because for those of us raised on techno-pop, and therefore by extension on Yazoo, we like Alison better this way, and we want to celebrate her in her electronic, technological guise — and why not, her dark and melancholy one too.

Which, as it happens, are exactly the tenets carved in stone by trip-hop, in which Other (2017) is thoroughly wrapped. Many have filed this new effort by the vocalist from Billericay, Essex, under synth-pop, but in truth proper synth-pop isn't exactly abundant here — just a couple of tracks with a clear Yazoo/Depeche Mode lineage, so as not to forget where it all started. For the rest, dreamlike atmospheres in the Bristol sound mould reign supreme, with languid rhythms and orchestral, syncopated sounds. Sigsworth, already a collaborator of Bjork and other brilliant minds in that vein like Imogen Heap, Bomb The Bass, Mandalay and Talvin Singh, continues the excellent work begun with the previous album, steering Moyet away from her old, well-established soul, jazz and acoustic territory. She doesn't need to be told twice. And given the great response sparked by the Reconnected Tour, why not keep going down the electronic road that was once again proving fruitful?

Other opens with "I Germinate", the heaviest track on the whole record, but already by the following "Lover, Go" and "The English U" the bpm drops and a languid spirit takes over. You can almost hear the more orchestral, less dark Massive Attack of "Blue Lines", or perhaps the Bjork of "Homogenic" and "Debut" in "Reassuring Pinches", the true gem of the record. Her old labelmates Depeche Mode get a tribute in "Beautiful Gun", with clear echoes — especially in the guitar riff — of a track that unfortunately ranks among the most forgettable in their discography (see "Martyr"). Alan Wilder of Recoil, meanwhile, makes an appearance in the spoken word of "April 10th" and in the cinematic atmospheres of "Alive", a masterpiece of its kind with stunning harmonies that sum up all the electronica, trip-hop, dub and dark tendencies of the 90s. "Happy Giddy", on the other hand, is pure Yazoo-style — it's the "Goodbye Seventies" of the new millennium, driven forward by a relentless beat and synth lines that seem to come straight off the Revox of "Upstairs at Eric's". The only acoustic moment, the delicate and melancholy piano ballad that gives the album its title, closes out a fine record full of ideas, both modern and classic at once, dark in its timbres and sounds, with hardly any concessions to the mainstream. This is the Alison we prefer.

In October of that same year the English singer appeared as a guest of fellow musicians A-ha on the acoustic album "Mtv Unplugged – Summer Solstice", which captures a lovely rendition of the track "Summer Moved On" recorded together a few months earlier in Norway, on the island of Giske, while in January 2018 she released her second live LP, titled The Other Live Collection, followed by a long silence that was finally broken in October 2024, when, to celebrate forty years of solo activity, she released her tenth studio album, with the telling title Key (2024).

It gathers sixteen tracks from her back catalogue enriched with two new songs, but it's not a straightforward best-of; rather, as the title itself suggests, it's a way of rereading the key pages of her repertoire in a completely different "key", under the direction of producer and arranger Sean McGhee, with whom "Key" was entirely conceived and recorded in London between Canonical and Tileyard Studios.

In short, the shimmering, rubbery eighties-style synths give way to a modern brand of electronica capable of moving intelligently across genres. The opener "Where Hides Sleep" is delightful: according to the artist herself, "compared to the original version, where it got a bit lost under the harshness of the production, now it nails the narrative and invites greater intimacy, much better suited to the restless hours of silence". The hit "Is This Love?" also seems to benefit from the anti-wrinkle touch-up: the arrangements are now lighter, placing weight on the emotion and drawing the listener's attention to the lyrics. Unfortunately the same trick doesn't work on the disappointing remakes of the other two classics, "All Cried Out" (a bit clunky and forced) and "Love Resurrection", whose dance beat overflows and spills out of bounds — a shame. Luckily these are the only two small blemishes on the tracklist, since the rest splits smoothly between intriguing trip-hop settings (Guy Sigsworth's touch is obvious on "All Signs Of Life") and nods to beloved vintage keyboards, which weave through the arrangements without ever overpowering the vocals, as in "You Don't Have To Go" (flecked with e-bow), "My Right A.R.M." and the excellent "Tongue Tied" (a little-known B-side of 2002's "Hometime").

By and large there's no compelling reason to prefer these over the original versions, but the vigorous performances certainly help — confident and deeply sensitive throughout. Standouts include the melodramatic "This House" and the two little chamber gems "World Without End" and "Filigree", the latter graced by delicate interplay between piano and double bass, courtesy of John Garden and Ben Nicholls respectively. The two new tracks with bluesy melodic structures, "Impervious Me" and "Such Small Ale" (featuring Richard Oakes of Suede on guitar), also stand out, along with the androgynous-toned soul ballads "Fire" and "Can't Say Like I Mean It" (both from 2007's "The Turn") and a couple of more carefree tracks ("So Am I" and "My Best Day", both dating back to 1994 and co-written with Ian Broudie, who later chose to include the latter on "Jollification", the album by his band Lightning Seeds). Nothing extraordinary, but pleasantly intimate and familiar: a nice way for Alison Moyet to reclaim her own music.

Contributions by Mauro Caproni ("Other")

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