3838ALISON MOYETOther continues Moyet’s
successful collaboration with
the producer Guy SigsworthMoyet is now nine
albums into a solo
career that includes
her 1984 debut Alf,
pictured leftThe gratitude is unnecessary. Moyet’s
latest, astonishing album, Other, is
arguably her most realised collection to
date, and its strengths lie as much in its
vivid, inventive language as in its dark,
startling music. Brimfull of her trademark
vocal intensity and peppered with
striking imagery –
I Germinate’s “bats in a
blink eclipse the moon/
Like whipped kerchiefs
in a courtly swoon”, The
Rarest Birds’ “dove-grey
gum constellations”- it represents the
culmination of her slow
but steady reinvention
from ‘pop singer’ to
‘proper artist’.
SELLING HER SHORT
To some, Moyet remains fossilised as
the Essex girl who fi rst emerged as one
half of Yazoo, alongside Vince Clarke,
before her 1984 solo debut, Alf, took
her to No.1, going four-times platinum
in the process. Even when, in 2014,
BBC Breakfast summarised her career
ahead of an interview, they stopped at
1986’s Is This Love?, as though the seven
albums she’d made since – including
2002’s Hometime and 2004’s Voice,
which both went gold, and The Minutes,
which had recently gone Top 5 – were
mere afterthoughts. Her six-month run in a
successful West End musical, and the play,
Smaller, in which she’d starred alongside
Dawn French, were also overlooked. But
Moyet’s been steadily refi ning her craft,
often out of the spotlight, and though her
commercial profi le may not be as high as
it once was, she’s now free to make music
that appeals, fi rst and foremost, to her
rather than the marketplace. The signs are
that it’s winning her new fans.
“I’ve been frustrated,” she admits when
reminded of that BBC appearance, and
of people’s nostalgia for her early work,
“but less so now, because I think people
are fi nally catching up with me. I’ve been
fortunate that I’ve been successful, and
it was because of that success that later
on I was able to make choices that were
perceived risky. What frustrates me is the
assumption that your best work is always
going to be your bestselling, so you’re
locked into this particular time. I hated
my 20s. I really like middle age and I’m
comfortable with the person I’ve become.
My great successes aren’t related to my
big sales.”
Though she describes herself,
knowingly, as “plump with confi dence”,
she’s also thoughtful and appealingly – if
unnecessarily – self-deprecating, though
this she disputes. “It’s not even self-
deprecating. I try to answer honestly, and
I think maybe you’ve got to have lots of
self-confi dence to own your crapness.”Moyet’s delight, however, comes
from the fact that Other is as much a
celebration of her love of language as her
self-declared, perennial outsider status.
It feels different from previous releases,
she says, “because the emphasis on
it is not singing. The emphasis on it is
words, and I’ve been
coming closer to that
point all the time.” This
is particularly surprising,
she confesses, because
she barely reads. “The
most impactful of times
with books in my life
was nursery rhymes,”
she comments, pausing
briefl y before adding,
“and I’m not even saying
that wryly! I don’t read,
and when I do read, I read fantasy.”
Indeed, one song, The English U – in
which she describes herself facetiously as
“a criminal to grammar/ To apostrophe,
the hammer”, but nonetheless “pretty
sound with tenses/ With ‘when’ and
‘which’ and ‘whence’s” – is a tender
paean to her late mother’s love of prose.“Even though she sunk into Alzheimer’s,”
Moyet explains, “the last vestige of
anything she had was her knowledge of
grammar. The disappointment she had
in me being dyslexic and not being able
to spell... How I wished I could have
honoured her. But language has become
very important to me. I love words, I love
the shape of words, and the colour and
the sound of them.”
Her mother, one might confi dently
suggest, would have been proud of what
she’s achieved, and not just because
of her verbal wit. Other fi nds Moyet
embracing what once troubled her,
whether it be her self-confessed public
awkwardness – “I’m so prone to circular
thinking! I can forget where I’ve been,
and yet one word that I’ve said couldkeep me awake for days!” – or her
concerns about how best to proceed with
her work. If, as she said at the time, The
Minutes was “mindless of industry mores
that apply to middle-aged women”, she’s
gone even further with Other.
“It’s mindless of all the industry mores”
she emphasises. “I’m aware of the
damning attitudes towards middle-aged
women: the idea that we’re asinine, or
we’re occupied by gentler pursuits, or
that middle-aged women aren’t expected
to be creative, or be seen in the media.
You can either react by feeling like you
can’t push yourself forward, or you just
continue regardless of how you’re going
to be accepted. I make records with no
expectations now. I don’t expect to be on
the radio, I don’t expect magazines to383838rather than the marketplace. The signs are
that it’s winning her new fans.
“I’ve been frustrated,” she admits when
reminded of that BBC appearance, and
of people’s nostalgia for her early work,
“but less so now, because I think people
are fi nally catching up with me. I’ve been
fortunate that I’ve been successful, and
it was because of that success that later
on I was able to make choices that were
perceived risky. What frustrates me is the
assumption that your best work is always
going to be your bestselling, so you’re
locked into this particular time. I hated
my 20s. I really like middle age and I’m
comfortable with the person I’ve become.
My great successes aren’t related to my
big sales.”
Though she describes herself,
knowingly, as “plump with confi dence”,
she’s also thoughtful and appealingly – if
unnecessarily – self-deprecating, though
this she disputes. “It’s not even self-
deprecating. I try to answer honestly, and
I think maybe you’ve got to have lots of
self-confi dence to own your crapness.”suggest, would have been proud of what
she’s achieved, and not just because
of her verbal wit.
embracing what once troubled her,
whether it be her self-confessed public
awkwardness – “I’m so prone to circular
thinking! I can forget where I’ve been,
and yet one word that I’ve said couldkeep me awake for days!” – or her
concerns about how best to proceed with
her work. If, as she said at the time, The
was “mindless of industry mores
that apply to middle-aged women”, she’s“It’s mindless of all the industry mores”
she emphasises. “I’m aware of the
damning attitudes towards middle-aged
women: the idea that we’re asinine, or
we’re occupied by gentler pursuits, or
that middle-aged women aren’t expected
to be creative, or be seen in the media.
You can either react by feeling like you
can’t push yourself forward, or you just
continue regardless of how you’re going
to be accepted. I make records with no
expectations now. I don’t expect to be on
the radio, I don’t expect magazines toCP30.Feat_AlisonM.print.indd 38 07/06/2017 16:47