Alison Moyet turns familiar songs into intimate dramas in Copenhagen
44 years after her breakthrough with the duo Yazoo, and especially the debut album “Upstairs at Eric’s”, singer Alison Moyet still had a remarkably solid grasp of the songs, not least because she had retained her powerful voice and her very personal sense of drama. No one else sang like British Geneviéve Alison Jane Moyet. With her powerful voice (where the darker part had become slightly darker), she could alternately bring something defiant and stubborn, and something vulnerable and fragile, to any song. One moment she sounded as if she was ready to meet force with force. The next moment she was on the verge of collapsing. It made a concert in 2026 with the now 65-year-old into 22 small, concentrated dramas. Very beautiful and very atmospheric.
She began by explaining the premise of the concert, because nothing was left to chance: she mixed songs from the two albums with Yazoo, almost all of “Upstairs at Eric’s” (1982), but also a couple from “You and Me Both” (1983), with tracks from two solo albums, “The Minutes” (2013) and “Other” (2017). “Many of the first songs were written when I was 16-17 and I had all sorts of ideas about what life should be, and then I hold those up against some of my later songs,” Alison Moyet remarked, honest enough to point out that she had not prepared anything about the difference between the two types of songs, “and that is probably also why I stammer”. Because she did stammer. Got a little stuck. Lost her thread. There was something almost refreshingly honest about her way of performing. For example, she had developed a small series of very personal dance moves, or small, angular movements with her body, for several numbers. An imperfect, in any case very human trait, side by side with a completely perfect voice for every single song.
Two thirds of the concert consisted of Yazoo songs, and they were also the ones received with the greatest enthusiasm by the audience, but they were not the ones Moyet dwelled on most. On the contrary, perhaps the biggest Yazoo hit, “Only You”, was delivered without embellishing it in the slightest (others would probably have stretched it out somewhat more), while almost more was added to a newer song such as the beautiful, quite lightly funk-influenced “Filigree”. Moyet used it to urge people not to give up too soon: “Don’t jump too soon. Hang on”. The song was inspired by a film at the cinema that bored her, if it had not been for five magical minutes that she would have missed if she had got up and left. Elsewhere she said that she had always been very inspired by Janis Joplin’s way of singing. “You should not underestimate the value of groaning in a song,” remarked Alison Moyet, who made no secret of the fact that she was past the age where she liked being flattered. And she did not like shouts such as “Hello, lovely lady” at all.
After several rather serious and more than a little dramatic songs, Moyet had to make it clear that “I am actually happy and not just raw and unvarnished”. Cheerful, not just gritty. The concert at the Opera in Copenhagen was the fourth stop on a tour with no fewer than 44 concerts through to 23 November, when she rounded things off at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. She was very much worth seeking out to experience or relive a very special voice, and familiar songs from slightly new, more electronica-influenced angles, backed by a skilful three-piece band and a rather inventive light show with a peculiar ’80s charm. Afterwards, it was pure luxury to imagine some of Moyet’s other solo hits in new versions. Perhaps especially “Weak in the Presence of Beauty”. That would have to be next time. Or the time after that. Moyet sounded almost as if she had only just started unwrapping presents.
Alison Moyet at the Opera in Copenhagen on Saturday 19 September.
