Alison Moyet: the trailblazer who beat a path for Adele proves she's still in the game

Telegraph

12-03-2025

Toward the start of her appearance at a sold-out London Palladium on Tuesday night, Alison Moyet laid out her intentions for her show. Although the evening's entertainment, she explained, celebrated her four decades as a solo artist, the material picked for inclusion in the 21-song set would sound 'as if it was written in the same period'. There would be no succumbing to the easiest trappings of nostalgia here, thank you very much. There then came a dash of the kind of defiance – spikiness, even – that has distinguished her career. With barely a smile, the audience was told that it 'might disagree' with her description of the show – 'but it don't matter'.
At its inspirational best, the 100-minute concert showed exactly why a superstar such as Adele owes Alison Moyet (at the very least) a lavish dinner and a spray of flowers. Now 63, her resonant voice – by turns towering and fibrous, strange and pliable – still possesses the kind of force that people flock to hear. Time and tide has not diminished it, or her.
Displaying presence and authority, between songs, her informal and conversational manner was yet another quality that might well have provided an element of inspiration for a certain Tottenham-born singer who found fame via a trail blazed by this forebear. Without seeming to work up a sweat, her sense of control was impeccable.
But there were problems, too. Backed only by a two-piece band (guitar and bass, mainly), the canned drums and numerous backing tracks used to fortify the live instruments lent the sound a brittle and thin quality. In a room such as the Palladium, the lack of wallop that could have been easily, and beneficially, provided by a full compliment of musicians was at times glaring. As well as sounding one-dimensional, at its worst, the swamp of electronica served to smother the very voice that more than 2,000 people had come to hear. Another thing, too: while no one in the stalls, or on the two balconies, expected the kind of racket served up by Motörhead, the volume was a bit too low.
Sometimes, though, it worked. Having made her bones alongside former Depeche Mode songwriter Vince Clarke, as one half of Yazoo, the chilly minimalism of early-day bangers such as Only You and Don't Go (both raucously received) were served well by the sparse and metronomic nature of the arrangements. Elsewhere, too, hits such as Love Resurrection and All Cried Out, from 1984's more-than-million selling Alf album, proved that even partial facsimiles of live music can't keep a good song down.
Neither did the technical chicanery prevent the evening as a whole from being charmingly breezy. Chatting away to the crowd, joking like a ditz, and baring teeth that remain pleasingly sharp – 'I do have a heart,' she said in the introduction to The Impervious Me. 'It's just that I don't care all that much' – Alison Moyet was easy to like and even easier to respect.
There is of course a reason that every concert on her current 24-date UK tour is sold out, and why, unlike other female artists from the eighties (Hazel O'Connor, say), she is still held in considerable esteem. It's just a shame that in London the humanity of this most vivid of singers was obscured by synthetic adornments.