Music of the Day, 11 April 2024

tears are delightful

My typical morning routine includes caffeinating myself while catching up on the Substacks I’m subscribed to. Several of my music ‘stacks usually publish in the morning, which is a welcome bonus. So … this morning, I was reading the latest column at

Songs That Saved Your Life

, titled “A Little Respect – Erasure,” when a familiar band name unexpectedly appeared. It also triggered a moody musical memory, but I had work waiting and couldn’t immediately scratch that itch.

A dive into my music library turned up the band’s folder, and on opening its sole album folder, I knew which song had started playing in my mind.

Did you think I was referring to Depeche Mode? While I certainly know of the band, I don’t think I’ve heard any of their music. It was the mention of Yazoo/Yaz¹ that detonated a mental depth charge—that’s how I’d categorized the sound at the beginning of “Winter Kills.” The song is from Yazoo’s 1982 debut album Upstairs at Eric’s.

I didn’t hear the album until over a decade later, when I moved in with my kids’ dad. While there was a little overlap in our musical tastes, he was much more into dance and synth music than I. It wasn’t unusual to careen from Dream Theater to Jean-Michel Jarre to Whitesnake on road trips, as we took turns choosing discs to play. The upbeat tempo and melody of Yazoo’s second hit single, “Don’t Go,” is infectiously catchy, but my favorite has long been the somber “Winter Kills.” The piano arpeggios wandering over the plodding thuds and Alison Moyet’s haunting vocals of inscrutable lyrics connects with me in a way I can’t articulate.

Best I can recall, my ex didn’t have any Depeche Mode or Erasure in his collection; both are absent from mine. But I do have a few other artists from the synth-pop genre that almost certainly came from him (including Jean-Michele Jarre and Frankie Goes to Hollywood), and I’m curious to see if any of those recordings have deep cuts that might similarly touch my soul. Suggestions for artists, albums, and/or songs are welcome; comments are always open to everyone.

1. For some reason, the band was called “Yaz” only in North America. As the band is British, I’ll stick with the former name throughout this post