How Alison Moyet tamed her demons and embraced her ‘otherness’

You might assume that the early 1980s were a time of giddy excitement for Alison Moyet: after releasing two major synth-pop albums with Yazoo bandmate Vince Clarke, she found herself in a bidding war between record labels Virgin and CBS. Though Virgin offered more money, she chose CBS because it had signed Janis Joplin – and its offices were tidier, which calmed her ADHD-induced dislike of mess.

But Moyet, 63, is much more content now than at the height of her fame.

“I don’t need to be affirmed by other people; I’ve become inured to that,” says the English musician, who is celebrating 40 years as a solo artist with the release of a new album, Key, and a global tour that includes Australia. “When I was young, I felt very ‘other’, like, ‘What is it about freak me that I need to change to fit into society?’ But one of the joys in getting older is recognising the joy in being ‘other’.”

Four decades prior, Moyet was being chased down the street and had fans knocking on her door. Hailing from what she calls “French peasantry”, and having quit school at 16 for a series of low-paid jobs, she felt intimidated by the pretensions of the creative middle class she’d been thrust into.

Moyet performing live in Australia in 1987.Credit: Tony Mott

“The fact I wasn’t typically attractive and more butch than you’d expect from girls at the time set me apart,” she says. “My roughness, bigness and strength was always commented upon, even by strangers in the street from when I was very little. As a girl, you end up making yourself smaller, quieter and more contained, which I think is sad.”

In the late 1970s, Moyet found her place among like-minded souls in the punk, blues and pub rock scenes of Essex, where she was born and raised. Almost overnight, the small-town existence she loved was replaced by the discombobulating stardom of Yazoo, whose hits include Only You, Don’t Go and Situation.

“I was distressed by the attention and the look people had on their faces when they saw someone from the telly,” she says. “The stuff people see as the upsides of this job are not what I desired.”

Alison Moyet has embraced her “otherness”.Credit: Naomi Davison

Not helping matters was a lawyer who wrongly advised that she was free to sign a worldwide deal. When she was slapped with an injunction, CBS refused to work with her until it was lifted, while the lawyer ignored her calls. This stalemate left her overwhelmed and isolated, triggering a battle with agoraphobia.

“If I heard a knock at the door, I’d duck beneath the sofa,” Moyet recalls. “I got other people to go to the supermarket because it was too traumatic. My only real socialisation was going back to my parents’ house on the weekends and being with my siblings or a couple of friends from school. It was like a slow sludge; I’d wake up in the mornings, hearing the birds singing or children playing outside, and feel a huge wave of depression. I just wanted nighttime to come, so I could go back to sleep.”

“Bleating for the affirmation of a lover is not something that resonates with me now.”

Alison Moyet

After signing a punitive deal to escape the injunction, Moyet released her debut solo album in 1984. Titled Alf in honour of her punk-era nickname, it contains the singles Love Resurrection, All Cried Out and Invisible. This was followed by Raindancing (Weak in the Presence of Beauty, Is This Love?), Hoodoo, Essex, Hometime, Voice, The Turn, The Minutes and Other.

Her 10th studio album, Key, contains 16 reworked singles, fan favourites and deep cuts as well as two new songs – but it isn’t a “best of”. Instead, Moyet describes Key as “an opportunity to look at the trajectory of the past four decades and explore songs that, in their original form, were never fully realised, or have had their relevance to me altered by time”.

Four tracks can already be streamed from the album, which will be released on October 4, including a beautifully moody version of All Cried Out.

“That was written in my early 20s, when I was by no means all cried out,” Moyet says. “I hadn’t even engaged with what it would mean to feel truly rinsed. It’s the language of a young person, but this is about getting older and reflecting. Your whole notion of love changes in your 60s.”

Reworkings of So Am I and Filigree – and the first new track, Such Small Ale – spotlight the crystalline aspects of Moyet’s exceptional vocal range. This might surprise those more familiar with the belting, bluesy style of her mid-1980s radio hits.

“When you’re known as a singer who can showboat, it becomes an expectation,” she says. “People get so used to the dramatics, they forget that when you’re dealing with something nuanced or considerate, or something like trauma, it might require stillness, a monotone or a conversational feel. When you arrive at wisdom, you have no need to scream at someone.”

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO ALISON MOYET

1. Worst habit? Biting my fingernails.
2. Greatest fear? I have two: to be on the underside of a dry-docked boat, and to be in an empty silo with nobody knowing you’re there while it’s slowly filling up with grain.
3. The line that stayed with you? When I was 13, I asked a teacher if I could audition for the school play and he said: “What would we want someone like you for?” The sad thing is that at the time, I remember thinking: “Yeah, fair point.”
4. Biggest regret? Not seeing my best friend the week before she died. It was a very sudden death.
5. Favourite book? His Dark Materials [fantasy trilogy by Philip Pullman]. On Key, there’s a song called Fire about [second novel] The Subtle Knife and the whole concept of Will and Lyra and therefore, separation.
6. The artwork/song you wish was yours? Anything that doesn’t have my face on it. Bands can get away with it but as a solo singer, I’m expected to have my face on artwork.
7. If you could time travel, where would you go? Middle Ages England but with an invisibility cloak because knowing my ancestry, which is thoroughbred serf, I don’t think my experience would have been great.

Moyet is upfront about not including her hit Invisible in her set list, partly due to the risk of replicating its Joplin-esque vocal style on stage.

“People are spending time and money and if I had to cancel a gig, that would be the worst,” she says. “And it’s another song I recorded before I had much life experience. Bleating for the affirmation of a lover is not something that resonates with me now. If someone is mistreating you, kick ’em to touch!”

Last year, Moyet graduated with a first-class degree in fine art printmaking from the University of Brighton. Her skills are evident in the striking black-and-white cover of Key, which she designed herself.

“This isn’t a punctuation mark; this is my career in broad overview and it’s something that continues,” Moyet says of her new album, Key.Credit: Alison Moyet

“It’s putting into the visual the thoughts and memories I’ve garnered over the years,” she explains. “It’s about things we can’t bring back into our lives but we do want to look at again.”

I’m surprised when she tells me that unless she’s recording or performing, she doesn’t sing – not even in the shower. But her love of music has always been more instinctive than self-consciously cerebral. Though she enjoys reading, she never devoured biographies or press articles about her favourite artists; she simply bought their records.

Moyet says she will continue performing until she can no longer do it well: “I will stop with no regrets. I feel really blessed that I’m in my 60s, I can still work, I have my children and my grandchildren, and an obsession with DIY. It’s like all my boxes have been ticked, which I didn’t expect when I was young.”

Judging by Moyet’s exquisite vocals on Key, retirement is a long way off.

“The reason I wanted new tracks on the album was to illustrate that this isn’t a punctuation mark,” she says. “This is my career in broad overview, and it’s something that continues.”

Her new version of Filigree, which first appeared on her acclaimed 2013 album The Minutes, is a case in point.

The song was inspired by a trip to Amsterdam with her husband, David Ballard, a couple of years earlier. Seeking a distraction from the drizzly weather, they went to a cinema. Almost immediately, she regretted choosing Terrence Malick’s experimental epic The Tree of Life.

“I was in no mood for it because I like narrative and storyline and this was all very slow,” Moyet says. “I would have left had my husband not been enjoying it so much. Then in the last five minutes, there was a scene so gloriously beautiful and redemptive that I found myself weeping.

“It felt like an analogy of what life really is: there will be times when people have suicidal feelings or a relationship becomes too difficult. Struggling is a part of life and you have to struggle to find your place. But if you just hang on a minute, you’ll turn right and see the purpose. Life is not this kind of glory story we get sold, where we feel something is terribly wrong if we’re not full of joy all the time. True joy comes in tiny moments and that’s what makes it remarkable.”

Key is released on October 4. Concert tickets at teglive.com.au

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