If the readership of music magazines is mainly men why is this readership apparently not interested in music by women?

I complained to Word magazine several years ago about the lack of women on their front covers and their reply was that when they had put a woman on the cover (they didn’t say who it was) their sales were lower. I wasn’t really impressed with that as an answer. On a side note, if there isn’t a woman on the cover (she doesn’t even need to be the featured artist, just a mention will do), I won’t buy the magazine. I bet I have really dented their sales.

One other thing I have observed is that when a chance to feature a woman arrives, it is not taken. When Kate Bush released Aerial in 2005 (by any standards a major event), only Mojo put her on the cover. 

Last Wednesday, while making bread I listened to an hour of Huey Morgan on 6 Music and he played no female artists, today he got to the 45 minute mark until he managed to play the Staple Singers. Goodness knows, I'm not asking for silly things like gender parity but no women worth playing?

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via songkick.com

I have managed to get past Enrique Iglesias and I'm currently listening to the next song by Usher (which sounds EXACTLY the same) but the accumulative effect of autotune is literally making my stomach ache.

I don't actually know who the woman in this picture is but I think she may be Katy Perry so in this case she could be kissing a girl (no offence, Justin - also a great number of teenage heartthrobs have looked like young women (except four of the Bay City Rollers obviously)).

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Day 3: Favourite Song Used In An Episode

I'm going to interpret this question not to mean a song especially written for an episode because that would either be "Under Your Spell" or "Walk Through the Fire" ("I think this line's mostly filler" cracks me up every time) but for anything played or heard on the show.

There is an awful lot of songs to choose from but the first artist that came into my head was Aimee Mann because I'm a bit of a fan. I was beyond thrilled when I saw Aimee Mann on Buffy, she sang two songs in the Bronze and got a line! Nobody else got a line. Love her.

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Of course, BtVS has one of the best ever theme tunes.

I found The Danger Girl with Gloria Swanson a little incoherent. It was nevertheless quite amusing and the few stunts that it had were jaw-dropping: a car passed within inches of a horse (twice), a car stopped in front of a person just in time and a small bus burst into a restaurant full of diners. The female vocal trio Juice did a fabulous job of adding to my enjoyment. They were a lot of fun.

Ich möchte kein Mann sein aka I don't want to be a man was a disappointingly superficial three-reeler by Ernst Lubitsch. I suppose if it hadn't played with gender roles quite so explicitly then I might have not have been quite so dissatisfied. The three leading performers were very funny and some of the situations were amusing (the governess smoking, Ossi being measured for a suit and, of course, the kissing) bit overall it fell a bit flat. The music by Zoe Rahman accompanied by her drummer was marvellous but by my cloth ears it didn't quite suit the film.

This clip is from another Ossi Oswalda/Ernst Lubitsch collaboration and it is a huge amount of fun with a great new score.

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I'm listening to Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961) on Spotify at the moment. I own this album on vinyl and so I haven't listened to it in years. It is really rather good. Garland's voice is still strong and the song selection is fabulous. She recounts a story about a newspaper article that describes her so: "She's not plump, she's not chubby, she's fat." - I guess the Daily Mail was around then too.

Talking of Spotify reminds me of The Gadget Show and Gail Porter's recent stint on the show while Suzi Perry was unwell. Gail and Jason did a comparison between Spotify and iTunes but that is besides my point which is that I can't tell you how fantastic it was to see a bald, large, unapologetic woman fronting a TV show. I admire how Gail has dealt with her alopecia areata.

I thought this recent post over at Sociological Images about Facebook's neutral avatar was really interesting. It is a man and so not neutral and goes in the face of Facebook's demographic. The leaflet that has just come through our door (only eight days after the day I thought we were supposed to get one) called Important Information About Swine Flu has two images of people: a man sneezing on the front cover and an avatar type image of a man inside. I don't think it would have occurred to me that there was something iffy about that before.

The follow up post is interesting too.

Awesome! Feminists have just been told by a feminist to lighten up. Her exact words are "Chill out everyone, it was a bit of fun!". Bingo! Julie, get lost.