“Don’t Go” by Yazoo (a k a Yaz)

He left Depeche Mode after writing their hits. She left school to sing in pubs with R&B bands and didn't even like synth pop. Of course they made history. [Summer of '82 pt. 5]

Can’t stop now

Alison Moyet received just one response to the classified ad she placed in the music weekly Melody Maker. The ad read "Female singer looking for a rootsy blues band," but what she got instead was Vince Clarke, who had just quit Depeche Mode after writing three high-charting singles for their U.K. top-10 album, Speak and Spell. Clarke’s music wasn’t what she was looking for in the least, but as it happened, he had been looking for the singer who had been going by her nickname of Alf; happening upon the ad was pure serendipity. 

The two had vaguely known of each other in their school days in Basildon, Essex, but more importantly, Clarke knew that he wanted a singer very different from Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, who was tunefully unemotional in the synth pop style of the day. Moyet had developed her flamethrower vocals fronting punk and then R&B bands in the area’s rough and tumble pub scene. She was untrained as a singer and says she earned her spot behind the microphone by virtue of being “big and argumentative.” She wasn’t at all sure about Clarke’s musical ideas, but knew that she was too broke to make a demo, which for a song called “Only You,” is exactly what Clarke was proposing. 

“Don’t Go” was originally written as a B-side for “Only You,” but the pair now known as Yazoo thought it was too strong a song for that. They were correct: “Don’t Go” would be their second single and second U.K. top-5. Its impact would also far surpass its chart position. Their second song together was more collaborative, and their lightning-in-a-bottle early partnership broke away from the dispassionate voices that hewed to the synthetic in synth-pop toward setting soulful vocals in electronic music’s ever-shifting frontiers to express what’s ineluctably human in a singer’s voice. It’s thrillingly immediate but also lays the blueprint for so much of the electronic dance music to follow.  

Not that this was necessarily Clarke’s goal. He turned to Moyet because he wanted a female voice for “Only You,” and her uncertainty with that “kind of gentle female singing,” as she put it¹, actually adds to the song’s poignancy. On “Don’t Go,” she’s not the least bit gentle, a sensual blues belter. She adds twists and turns to the vocal melody as if she were fronting the kind of rootsy band she’d sought in the Melody Maker classified. Her full-throated vocals mesh well with the riveting sounds Clarke wrings out of his ARP 2600, still one of the fattest, most delicious synth riffs on record, in part because he also succeeds on feel. Even as electronic music has moved more toward software than hardware, Clarke still relies on the tactile sensation of playing his synthesizers to create music for Erasure, his current long-running group with Andy Bell². “Don’t Go” has a thrilling dynamic tension to be sure, but the song ultimately works as a kind of duet. 

Baby make your mind up give me what you got

Fix me with your lovin' shut the door and turn the lock

“Don’t Go” was recorded at London’s Blackwing studio, which was where Clarke recorded Speak & Spell with Depeche Mode; it didn’t occur to him that there was another studio he could use. The problem was that while Clarke was driven to quickly churn out songs to maintain the attention of Mute, their (and Depeche Mode’s) record label, the studio had been booked by another of Mute’s acts, Fad Gadget. This forced Clarke and Moyet to record their debut Upstairs At Eric’s with Blackwing’s owner and titular Eric, E.C. Radcliffe, starting work at 6 am and going until they had to vacate the studio by lunch. 

By most studio schedules, this is madness, but this, along with the invigorating freshness of the Clarke-Moyet dynamic, is perhaps to what Upstairs At Eric’s owes its loose, experimental feel. The album is wildly uneven, flitting from the affecting but dirge-like “Winter Kills,” to the dancefloor slammer “Bring Your Love Down (Didn’t I)” and even an awkward tape loop exercise in “I Before E Except After C” where Moyet can barely contain her laughter. The songs also have relatively few elements to them — only 8 or 9 10 tracks — which puts a necessary emphasis on just what’s so cool about each sound. 

Clarke, who writes songs on guitar and plays them on synthesizers on which he can turn knobs with abandon to tweak the sounds, had a willing co-conspirator in Radcliffe. Along with its arresting sci-fi-pump-organ synth sound, what makes “Don’t Go” groove is its distorted, crunchy snare. Radcliffe³ said he created the sound by ganging two digital reverb machines together, explaining, “We came across that sound entirely by accident, but then again, in the final analysis I think you discover almost everything by accident, just by fiddling around.⁴”

In that sense, Alison Moyet was the accident that made Yazoo and so much more. Vince Clarke had been looking for her phone number, but what the singer brought to the music once he found her was the ultimate tweak on synth pop expectations for a female vocalist. “Situation,” the song they wrote to replace “Don’t Go” as the B-side for “Only You,” would go on to be a North American club hit and was released, against their wishes, as the group’s first single in the U.S. (where for the usual tiresome legal reasons, they are known as Yaz). “Don’t Go” followed “Situation” to the top of the U.S. dance charts, fitting in nearly with the developing House Music scene that prized distinctive electronic sounds and throaty, soulful women. Club DJs remixed the songs — further tweaking and fiddling with these sounds — until their core elements defined the sound of dance music for decades to come.  

12 Song Playlist

Did I have a mind to make this an epic playlists that went into all the songs and artists that Yazoo inspired? Yes, but it’s summer and I really should give everyone a break. That said, give a listen to La Roux and Hercules & Love Affair, especially their new album with ANOHNI.

Thank You

Thanks to the folks at Apple Podcasts for spotlighting the podcast version of The Best Song Ever (This Week) and thanks especially to John who jumped through the hoops to submit the pod for their consideration. I really appreciate John and Mark’s efforts in producing the podcast, but I’ve also come to realize how much I appreciate working with a team.

I’ve you’re inclined, the pod is available on Spotify and across all the platforms, not just Apple.

By the way, the podcast usually lags behind the Substack email by a week or two. You folks will always get the new ones first. Don’t tell the podcast people, but you’re my favorite.

Thanks, too, to the couple dozen folks who’ve signed up in recent weeks. I hope you’ve enjoyed this summer focus on songs from 1982. After next week, I’ll go back to a mix of eras and genres. I really appreciate you coming along for the ride.

1. In her candid interview in The Quietus

2. Bell, it must be said, sounds a bit like Moyet on “Only You.”

3. Radcliffe would form The Assembly with Clarke, but they only managed one single, “Never, Never” with ex-Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey on vocals.

4. From an interview with Clarke in Electronics & Music Maker