“An amazing talent, a beautiful soul and a mischievous glint”: Danielle Moore, remembered

Following the sudden passing of the beloved Crazy P vocalist, four of her friends and collaborators reflect on an extraordinary, empathetic artist and person.

Danielle Moore, who sadly passed away on 30 August at the age of 52, was a beloved figure in the world of dance music. The vocalist, songwriter and DJ, best known as the frontwoman of the band Crazy P, electrified audiences with her powerful voice and charismatic presence onstage. She was, according to those she encountered throughout her career, a deeply kind and warm person. She made fans wherever she went, but she also made friends.

Moore grew up near Manchester and discovered a love of dancing and dance music early, going to the legendary Haçienda from the age of 18. She joined Crazy P founder members Jim Baron and Chris Todd in 2002, alongside Mav Kendricks and Tim Davies, and transformed their club tracks into fully fleshed-out songs with indelible hooks and memorable lyrics. They recorded seven albums together, with a distinctive mix of disco, house, funk and electronics, but Moore’s vocals became the focus, bottling her infectious spirit through her words of love and loss.

After releasing albums on Manchester label Paper and Shiva Records, it was 2008’s Stop Space Return for 2020 Vision that served as Crazy P’s breakthrough LP. As the band’s touring schedule grew, bringing their bright, effervescent energy to ever growing festival and gig crowds across Europe and beyond, it was Moore who became the focal point. Renowned for her athletic dance moves onstage, she channelled disco diva abandon that offered a refreshingly human counterpoint to the digitised punk messiness and electro noise that proliferated in the late 2000s era of Ed Banger, blog house and minimal. In recent years, her lyrics tended more towards the political, railing against divisive governments and celebrity worship on 2019’s Age of the Ego. Her last release, which came in late June, was the single Any Signs Of Love,  an epic, six-minute disco cut adorned with strings and thumping bass. Her vocals, when they appear after the three-minute mark, soar and implore: “any signs of the love that we know?”

But Moore was more than a frontwoman – she was also a skilled DJ who added live vocals to her record selections as part of Crazy P Soundsystem. She will be remembered as not only a magnetic musical icon, but as a witty, brilliant person by many.

“Danielle lived a life driven by love, compassion, community and music,” Crazy P posted on their Instagram account. “She lived the biggest of lives. We will miss her with all our hearts.”

Crack Magazine asked several of Moore’s friends and musical colleagues to share some of their memories of her.

 

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Colleen Cosmo Murphy

DJ, producer and broadcaster

Danielle was an extraordinary person. She was grounded, she was relatable, she wasn’t out of reach of the everywoman. She didn’t hold herself beyond us, she was one of us. She didn’t have any pretentious airs, I think that’s one thing that really drew people to her. She could be self-deprecating, but she was also very honest and straightforward in her lyrics and music as well. Quite a lot of the lyrics were about unrequited love, or hurt, but were also hopeful. I found that more with her earlier lyrics, which seemed to evolve over the course of time into more all-encompassing, holistic, empathetic love. I also noticed that some of her lyrics got more sociopolitical as she went on. If you think about the album Age of the Ego, there’s two songs that stand out to me, The Witness and We Will Fuck You Up, kind of addressing the Orwellian, Big Brother world that we live in. I believe on the last song that’s been released recently, Any Signs of Love, she sings of the “powers that are hungry to divide people” and asks, “are there any signs of love, the love that we know?” It’s looking for people to have more of a humanitarian consciousness, but it seemed like her lyrics were reaching beyond the personal and going more to the collective, from micro to macro.

Another thing stylistically was her voice. She had limitations on her range, but she used that to her advantage. I think of people like Grace Jones – she doesn’t have a massive range, but she has a good emotional range. And I found this with Danielle, too. She could be cheeky, sometimes childlike, playful. What I noticed was she got more confident with her voice as she went along. On a lot of it you can hear a love of house music. House is known for repetitive vocals, samples that are used and used. She would sing it like that, the same phrase over and over, but it drew you in, it was almost like her voice was an instrument. I was just in the studio this month remixing Stop Space Return, which is a great song. In the lyrics she’s singing about a former lover, who she feels used her and messed her around. Ultimately she stands firm in not relenting and giving her love to someone who isn’t showing her the respect she deserves. The lyrics drew me in, but the thing that’s funny is I don’t listen to lyrics first, I feel the overall music and then start getting into different parts. I had her voice soloed and I was listening to it over and over again. It was unprocessed, the pitch was perfect, the tone was perfect, so much so that the first draft I sent in, I kept her vocals dry on some of the sections because I thought they could handle it. She had a very pure tone, and she sang on pitch – in heels while doing acrobatics onstage!

Crazy P had very long instrumental sections. She would have to find something to do onstage to keep the audience going when she wasn’t singing, and I saw that performance style really evolved and got more confident, became more charismatic and more athletic. I have so much admiration, she could do cartwheels onstage, I’ve never been able to do a cartwheel in my entire life. But it wasn’t like an ego thing. She was just really one of us, even though she was an extraordinary person.

This song she did with Ashley Beedle and Darren Morris’s Mavis project, I would ask people to listen to this one, because it’s not one of her really well-known songs. It’s much more tender and languidly paced. It’s called Let Your Love Shine, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Her lyrics and her voice really come through. It’s a very soulful kind of pop song, really poignant. There’s a depth to her lyrics that she didn’t always get recognised for. It shows a different side to her, and it’s really beautiful. I opened up my show with it the other day.

Guy Williams

DJ and promoter

She had a big circle of friends. Obviously a lot of people knew her for her music and stuff. We’d been mates for nearly 15 years, and like a lot of people, I loved her very much. It’s very sad.

What I loved about Dani was she was real. There was integrity. She was a real empath. She felt so much, in terms of what was going on in the world, and I think that empowered her to be an amazing performer, which she was. You couldn’t take your eyes off her when she was onstage. She was a beautiful soul, but also mischievous, which I think is why we got on, ’cause we literally could be cackling about anything, and then the next minute talking about World War III. We had that capacity to cover all bases, as it were.

I felt that she had integrity and that came across in her lyrics, you believed them. You believed when she was talking about heartbreak, or joy, or raging against the machine. You felt that was a real outlet for her as well. But I don’t think she even realised how much she was loved and how much she touched people. Everyone’s got an ego, but hers certainly wasn’t out of control. She had that very special ability to make you feel really at ease straight away. Lots of people have being saying that, from people she only met a few times to people who were in her life more often. She liked helping people, and had that balance of an amazing talent, a beautiful soul and a mischievous glint.

Michelle Walton

Fashion designer

Dani was my muse, the base of my clothing brand [Kimonooh]. She wore a lot of it and she absolutely loved it. She was the front woman for this amazing band, but she was so down to earth, so humble, so kind… She was like nobody else, so bloody cool. Everybody wanted to be her.

She had so much energy. She’d be up on the stage dancing, then she’d get in the crowd. She just mesmerised you. Her tracks were brilliant, poignant, they always sent a message, about the government or the world in general. There never will be anyone else like her. I think what will happen now is people will go over Crazy P’s back catalogue and start listening to her words more. Sometimes I think people sing along, but they don’t know what they’re singing. I listen to every word, I knew what the messages were. When you listen to her lyrics, you can tell what was getting to her, what she thought of the world, the robots being in charge, the way the world is changing, the way it’s going online. I was just in awe of her. I wish she was still here, and the void in my life is never going to get filled by anyone or anything.

Bill Brewster

DJ and author

She was nothing like the person onstage. I think she used the clothes she wore really well, because it allowed her to become this different person. It always reminded me of someone being an actress – they put a costume on and they become someone else. I think it really helped her perform, that she took on this mantle as the frontwoman and the diva. She was very self-deprecating when she talked about herself. I don’t think she ever understood how good she was, both as a frontperson, as a songwriter, as a lyricist and just generally as a person. She was an incredible person. You only meet people like her very rarely in life, that really have an enormous impact on the people around them. 

That’s what she was like – one of those people that you would never forget if you met her. She was kind, funny, generous, cheeky; she had a very northern, strong sense of humour. From the first time I met her about 26 years ago, she left an impression about who she was. I think one of the secrets of that band was the fact that they all kind of liked each other, which I’m sure if you’ve dealt with any band who’ve been together a long time, they often don’t like each other very much and don’t socialise with each other. And yet they always seemed to be very at ease with each other as people – they were kind of like a family.

I’ve booked the Crazy P Soundsystem before for one of my parties, and having Danielle up DJing, but also singing as well, brought an extra dynamic element to what they did. I know it’s not a super original thing, because there have been other people like Sonique and Robert Owens who would do that as well. But they seemed to have all bases covered for the music they were performing and writing.

You’ve only got to look at Instagram and the amount of people on there that are recounting their particular story about the time they met Danielle. Not just people in the industry, but people who went to see Crazy P play somewhere and met her. She would always have time for anybody.