Girl power?

"What's it like being a girl in a band? / I don't quite understand", sang Kim Gordon on 'Sacred Trickster', the searing lead-off track on Sonic Youth's final album The Eternal (she later chose to christen her memoirs Girl In A Band). The reality is that even in 2015 life in the music business remains a challenge for women - as music critic Jessica Hopper found out when she put a call-out for stories of everyday sexism in the field and received a flood of responses.

Of course, women are certainly more visible in the music industry now than they were a few decades ago - but as one of Hopper's respondents, Jocelyn Brown, noted, many of those who have secured themselves a high status pay "very high prices" for that visibility, forced to compromise to meet conventions and expectations or to live up to male fantasies.