I don't know why but I keep buying The Word magazine. Honestly, there is some good stuff in it sometimes (like the interview with the Pet Shop Boys in which I was astonished to read that Neil Tennant had come out in 1993 and here was me (who hadn't spotted those Freddie Mercury clues) thinking he had been gay all along based on such evidence as It's a Sin:

It's a Sin

Heart: Heart

and working with Liza Minnelli.

And another interesting fact, David Tennant

The Doctor and Rose

named himself after Neil, I think that's cool).

Anyway, David Hepworth's digs at female singer-songwriters are bothering me. He had a pop at Laura Veirs last month (or so) but this month's whinge about Neko Case is just bizarre. If you don't get a song first time, the songwriter is apparently deficient and the proof of this seems to rest with his lack of understanding of these lines in Margaret Vs Pauline: "One left her sweater sitting on the train, the other lost three fingers at the cannery". My interpretation of this is that one is so privileged the worst thing that could happen to her is that she loses her jumper while the other's problems are a bit more serious which I don't think is too hard to grasp.