Yazoo - “Nobody’s Diary”
Fetenhits: The Real 80′s
Song released in 1983. Compilation released in 1999.
Electropop / Synthpop / New Wave
OK, first of all, let's clear up some of the inevitable confusion. Yazoo is Yazoo in the UK, but in North America, they're Yaz. That's because there was a record label called Yazoo that wouldn't allow the pair to use their name. There was also a small American rock band whose name was Yazoo, too. So that's one thing. The other is that Yazoo/Yaz is not Yazz. Like Yazoo/Yaz though, Yazz is also British and made 80s pop music, but Yazz is just one person. (Also, as this is a blog that writes a lot about electronic music, I feel like I should mention that Yazz's partners in crime, The Plastic Population, are also the inimitable duo of Coldcut, the breaks and trip hop pioneers who gave us the Ninja Tune label.) Furthermore, Yaz is the nickname of Boston Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski, a guy who had 3,419 hits and 452 homerus in 23 seasons! He's not Yazoo/Yaz either! And Yaz is also the brand name of a birth control pill that contains drospirenone that may also be used for other indications! That's not Yaz/Yazoo either! And don't even get me started on the Yaz culture from present-day Iran that existed in the Iron Age or the Yazoo Brewing Company in Tennessee or the Yazoo lawnmower company or the Native American Yazoo tribe from Mississippi or the milk-based flavored beverage from Belgium called Yazoo or the character Yazoo from Final Fantasy VII or the multiple US Navy ships called Yazoo or the YAZ programmer toolkit for development of Z39.50 clients and servers, because none of those are Yazoo/Yaz! Just three different letters, y, a, and z, and yet so many different meanings. And for the rest of this post, rather than refer to them as Yazoo/Yaz, I'm just gonna call them what they always intended themselves to be called, and that is Yazoo.
So who is Yazoo then? Well, they're an early 80s electropop / synthpop / new wave duo that consisted of Vince Clarke, who had just left Depeche Mode after posting their debut album and four fantastic singles at the time, and Alison Moyet, a soulful singer who would go on to achieve a whole lot more with a solo career. The two actually went to the same Saturday music school as kids but had never spoken to each other before teaming up as 21 year olds. However, they were certainly aware of each other's existence. Moyet's first guitarist in her first band just happened to be Clarke's best friend.
In 1981, Moyet, who was a punky pub rock type, placed an ad in Melody Maker looking for someone to collaborate with, and Clarke, who had just left Depeche Mode, was looking to take part in a new project that would allow him to stay on Depeche Mode's label, Mute. He had seen Moyet sing before and loved her work. And he was also the only person who responded to her ad. Moyet wasn't expecting someone all that famous to take her up on her offer and she didn't much care for Depeche Mode, but she decided to do it anyway. Clarke had proven successful and she decided that she wanted to make music with someone who had actually managed to do something with their career, unlike seemingly everyone else she knew.
Immediately, Clarke had a piece of music for Moyet to sing over, and then the demo was brought to Mute, and all of a sudden Yazoo had their first single on their hands, "Only You," which hit #2 in the UK. Together, Clarke and Moyet would spawn two albums, Upstairs at Eric's, followed by You and Me Both, in a matter of 18 months, with the four singles they released in the UK going to the top 20, and three of those hitting the top 3.
But that was it. Despite the fantastic electronic pop music that paired soulful, deep, bluesy vocals with cheery, Kraftwerk-inspired, layered melodies, Clarke and Moyet didn't get along. Clarke was shy and held all his anger in and Moyet was the opposite. Clarke wanted to break the relationship off after one album, but then thought better of it. He thought he'd look like a real pill jumping from project to project after being in a group and doing only one album and then leaving. So Yazoo made their second album, but they knew it was over before they finished recording it. Clarke would build the beats and melodies in the morning and Moyet would swing by at night to record the vocals. There was no active collaboration.
But whatever, man. The shit still bopped. You and Me Both's only single, "Nobody's Diary," went to #3 in the UK and #1 on the US dance charts. It was a little more subdued than their previous output, sure, but the song still rules. Yazoo's formula was simply implacable at the time. Despite the fact that Clarke and Moyet didn't get along, they still managed to spin absolute gold. And here's a nice little quote from the biography section of Yazoo's website:
Yazoo were Kraftwerk through the looking glass - this was electronic pop made by humans, not machines.
And that's because while Kraftwerk and many electronic groups that came after them, from Daft Punk to thousands of techno acts, did everything they could to present themselves as robots or faceless machines, Alison Moyet was in Yazoo to provide that contrasting human element that machines still have yet to figure out how to accurately and convincingly replicate.
Clarke was the machine and Moyet was the soul. That was made even more apparent in the video for "Nobody's Diary" as Moyet sang like a human with natural emotion and Clarke stood as still and emotionless as possible as his fingers played his shoulder-strapped synthesizer as if he had been programmed that way by a microchip that was implanted into his skull before the video was shot.
Yazoo had a real, unique "ghost in the machine" kind of vibe with their music; the bionic woman; woman and machine. You get the idea. It was captivating fun.
And that shit was foundational, too. It was a long time coming of course, and a lot happened in between, but the late 2000s/early 2010s that gave birth to that female-led indietronica / electropop / dance-pop boom that had acts like Phantogram, Purity Ring and La Roux owes a debt of gratitude to Yazoo. Yazoo ended up laying the initial groundwork so those acts could thrive decades later. They were the first group to so transparently pair the emotional female vocal with that machine-like, Kraftwerkian, electronic pop sound. They definitely inspired groups like LCD Soundsystem, too.
Starting off minimally with its first verse, "Nobody's Diary" is a song that begins to realize itself when Clarke decides to bring in his drum machine and a bassline. With those pieces in place, he sandwiches Moyet's lightly peaked choruses with simple and catchy coasts of leading melodic twee. It's just as well, too. Who knows if Clarke and Moyet ever talked about how to go about doing this song, but his childlike, nostalgic melodies serve this song really well since Moyet wrote the lyrics when she was only 16, before even her first sexual experience.
The last thing I'll add is that Vince Clarke is an absolute master of pop songcraft as someone who just uses synthesizers and drum machines to make his music. He conjured up such a smooth, enjoyable, nuanced ride for this one. It's just so good. I won't call it timeless since it's definitively 80s, but goddamn, does it still go. After Yazoo, Clarke would extend his career indefinitely as half of the even more successful synthpop duo, Erasure.
But Yazoo cannot be ignored. Such a formidable, yet unfortunately fleeting electropop / synthpop / new wave force. So influential in so many ways and such a small catalogue. Wish they gave us more, but at least they gave us some.
