Iconic 1980s singer Alison Moyet has made a startling revelation about deliberately destroying her most treasured personal possessions, including her gold discs and personal diaries, to spare her children future emotional hardship.
A Deliberate Act of Letting Go
The 64-year-old music star, real name Geneviève Ballard, explained her drastic actions during a candid appearance on the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast with Paul Whitehouse and Dr Mine Conkbayir. She described how, upon moving to Brighton in 2013, she decided to "downsize" and "travel lighter" by incinerating and smashing her personal archives.
"I burned my diaries, my gold discs, everything. I smashed them all up. I got rid of everything," Moyet stated. Her primary motivation was compassion for her three children: Joe, 40, Alex, 38, and Caitlin, 29. She wished to prevent them from the agonising task of sifting through her life's memorabilia after her death.
"It's really hard to dismantle your parents' lives like that," she reflected. "The idea of going through their things and having to decide what you’re going to keep and what you’re going to have to offload... I didn’t want that for my kids. I don’t think having a singer for a mother should be a massive memory for them. It's a burden."
ADHD, Diagnosis, and Digital Purging
Moyet's approach extends to her digital life. She disclosed that she has professionally wiped her computer clean on at least three separate occasions, erasing contacts, demos, songs, diaries, and even photographs of her children. She links this extreme measure to her recently diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which caused her to feel overwhelmed by unfinished tasks.
"I feel so oppressed about the tasks I’ve not completed," she admitted. "I’ll have like 30,000 emails unopened. I’ll have too many photographs, files that I feel bad about not having dealt with." For years before her diagnosis, she believed she was simply "lazy" and not trying hard enough.
Receiving the diagnosis and subsequent medication proved transformative. "The medication helped me to forgive myself," she said, explaining she spent years ruing missed opportunities and feeling like a "social pariah" or a "freak" who struggled to maintain friendships.
Academic Triumph and Perfectionism
Alongside navigating ADHD, Moyet has also managed dyslexia. Despite earlier academic struggles, she recently returned to education with remarkable success. In 2023, she graduated from the University of Brighton with a first-class degree in fine art printmaking, fulfilling a lifelong ambition thwarted in her youth by gender barriers in the printing trade.
However, she told the podcast that her university experience, while positive, was also gruelling. Her drive to disprove old accusations of laziness led to extreme perfectionism. "I would be up at 6am, I would work til 2am – I didn’t sleep... It drove me bats**t. And the perfectionism... would literally make me sick."
Alison Moyet first found fame as one half of the synth-pop duo Yazoo with Vince Clarke, before launching a highly successful solo career. Her 1984 debut album Alf went straight to number one, and she is a three-time BRIT Award winner.
