Alison Moyet has revealed that she smashed up her gold discs and burned her diaries to save her children from the burden of having to go through them when she dies.
The singer, 64, appeared on the latest episode of the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast with Paul Whitehouse and Dr Mine Conkbayir, to open up about her experiences navigating ADHD and dyslexia.
She described how she got rid of many of her personal possessions when she moved to Brighton in 2013, and has also regularly had her computer professionally wiped of all her files, including photos of her kids.
Alison is the proud mum of three children, sharing son Joe, 40, with her ex-husband Malcolm Lee, daughter Alex, 38, with former partner Kim McCarthy and daughter Caitlin, 29, with husband David Ballard.
Recalling her decision to destroy her things, she said: ‘When I moved to Brighton we decided to downsize and that’s when I burned all of my kind of personal possessions.
‘I burned my diaries, my gold discs, everything. I smashed them all up. I got rid of everything. I wanted to travel lighter.’
Alison Moyet has revealed that she smashed up her gold discs and burned her diaries to save her children from the burden of having to go through them when she dies (seen in 2019)
The singer, 64, appeared on the latest episode of the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast with Paul Whitehouse and Dr Mine Conkbayir, to open up about her experiences navigating ADHD and dyslexia
She explained she did it for the sake of her children, admitting she didn’t want them to have to sort through her things after she had passed, saying: ‘It’s really hard to dismantle your parents’ lives like that.’
Alison said: ‘I also thought when you lose your kind of parents there’s that awful thing… 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, when this was their life that they’d collated.
‘And 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 hard enough when you lose a parent to then have to go through all their things and think was this precious to her? It’s really hard to dismantle your parents’ lives like that. It’s a burden.’
Alison also said she’d taken her computer to a shop to have it purged of all her contacts, demos, diaries, songs, and even photographs, at least three separate times.
She explained that the regular practice was the result of her ADHD, as it caused her to become overwhelmed by all the jobs she yet to do and therefore found it easier to start over
She said: ‘I feel so oppressed about the tasks I’ve not completed. I’ll have like 30,000 emails unopened. I’ll have too many photographs, files that I feel bad about not having dealt with. I’ve [had my computer wiped] about three times.’
The hitmaker, real name Geneviève Ballard, only received her ADHD diagnosis in recent years, after spending years believing herself ‘lazy’ and not trying hard enough.
Alison also said she’d taken her computer to a shop to have it purged of all her contacts, demos, diaries, songs, and even photographs, at least three separate times (seen in 2011)
The hitmaker, real name Geneviève Ballard, only received her ADHD diagnosis in recent years, after spending years believing herself ‘lazy’ and not trying hard enough (seen being made an MBE in 2022)
After finally getting the diagnosis, she said it had been a catalyst for allowed her to forgive herself for her perceived flaws, crediting medication for helping her accept herself after years of feeling like a ‘freak’.
Alison said: ‘The medication helped me to forgive myself. Because you can spend such a long time ruing your choices and your missed opportunities.
‘And people find that a funny thing to hear, they go “But you were a pop star, you travelled the world and made lots of money”.
‘But it’s the things that would’ve mattered to me, how I felt about myself, how I always felt like a social pariah, a bit of a freak, I had trouble kind of keeping friendships going because I don’t quite know how to do it.’
She added: ‘It’s about getting to the point where you accept yourself. You can spend so much of your life thinking you need to cut your shape to fit society or the people around you.’
After struggling at school due to her dyslexia, Alison returned to further education recently, and graduated with a first class degree in fine art printmaking from the University of Brighton in 2023.
She took to X at the time to reveal how she’d long desired to follow in her father’s footsteps by pursuing a career in printmaking before embarking onher pop music career.
She tweeted: ‘Aged 16 I wanted to be a printer like my father, my grandfather and his father before him. I was met with a ‘No. Closed Shop. No women’.
After finally getting the diagnosis, she said it had been a catalyst for allowed her to forgive herself for her perceived flaws, crediting medication for helping her accept herself after years of feeling like a ‘freak'(seen in 2004)
After struggling at school due to her dyslexia, Alison returned to further education recently, and graduated with a first class degree in fine art printmaking from the University of Brighton in 2023 (seen)
Alison, who became one of the UK’s most successful singers of the 1980s, was one half of pop act Yazoo with former Depeche Mode musician Vince Clarke (seen together in 1982) before finding success as a solo artist
‘[I’m] 62 this month and I’ve just completed my first degree. Fine Art Printmaking. Born to make a mess and learnt to clean it up.’
But speaking about her university experience, she admitted that her quest for perfectionism during her studied caused her to become ‘sick’.
She told Paul and Mire: ‘University was really good for me because I had a structure, but it also made me really ill because I was so intent on not falling prey to all those things I’d been accused of – the laziness, the lack of focus – that it went the other way.
‘I would be up at 6am, I would work til 2am – I didn’t sleep. It drove me bats**t. And the perfectionism, the complete perfectionism, and then the guilt about not being around for other people. It would literally make me sick.’
Alison, who became one of the UK’s most successful singers of the 1980s, was one half of pop act Yazoo with former Depeche Mode musician Vince Clarke before finding success as a solo artist.
Her debut album Alf in 1984 went to straight to number one, and she’s gone on to release nine more LPs and three compilation albums that have each charted in the top 30 of the UK Albums Chart.
A three-time BRIT Award winner, Alison was nominated for a Grammy for It Won’t Be Long back in 1993 and has worked with the likes of Nile Rodgers, Dusty Springfield and a-Ha among others.
