Does knowing what amp Paul McCartney used on Sgt. Pepper enhance the experience? Or is the epitome of pop a packed dancefloor and the opening chords to Dancing Queen? The BBC’s head of pop has divided households by declaring that men listen to music on an intellectual level while women respond from the heart.

Facing a listener backlash over changes to the BBC 6 Music digital radio rock station, Lesley Douglas argued that its output had marginalised female listeners. Ms Douglas, who coordinates the BBC’s coverage of popular music across radio and televi-sion, said that men responded to music on an intellectual level, whereas female listeners had a more emotional reaction to songs and were not interested in track listings and production techniques.

George Lamb, a 6 Music “personality DJ”, introduced to bring a warmer, more female-friendly touch to mornings, has provoked a campaign, largely from male listeners, demanding his removal.

Ms Douglas defended 6 Music on the Radio 4 Feedback programme. She said: “What was true is that for its first five years the audience was very, very male biased. For a station that has music at its heart, it is only right to make it more open to female listeners.

“It’s partly how you talk about music. For women, there tends to be a more emotional reaction to music. Men tend to be more interested in the intellectual side of the music, the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing.” There was “no reason why women shouldn’t love music as much as men” and the changes were designed to make programmes more accessible to a female audience.

6 Music was designed to appeal to thirtysomethings. Featuring informed DJs such as Steve Lamacq, it has a weekly audience of almost 500,000. Listeners said that Lamb had introduced “meaningless drivel” to the station. A BBC website provides a glossary of “Lamby’s lingo”, including phrases such as “feelin’ it” and “wackola”. Music would remain at the heart of the 6 Music remit.

Caitlin Moran

We understand in a way that men never will

When I first became a music journalist, at the age of 17, I cheerfully presumed that in, say, ten years, I too would be able to have conversations like the ones all the older, male journalists had in the pub. The kind of conversations about albums where one man goes: “Obviously, the whole project got its wings when Ahmet Ertegun took to the helm,” and everyone else would go: “Ah, Ahmet Ertegun, of course!”, and then laugh knowingly.

Well, it’s 15 years later, and I still can’t really have a conversation where I go: “Ah, Ahmet Ertegun!” in a knowing manner.

But what I have learnt is that I don’t need to. It doesn’t actually matter. That’s how men talk about music. They treat discussions about popular culture like it’s some secret nerd-battle, where you use your superior arsenal of trivial facts to prove that you love the Clash more than anyone else around the table at the time.

Women, on the other hand, prove that they love a song by either screaming: “I love this song!” and getting up and dancing to it, or wailing: “I love this song!” and bursting into tears. Women make jokes about the band’s hair, drink a shot of tequila for each time Rihanna sings the word “umbrella”, and work out in which order they would have sex with the band lineup – a popular, diverting game known as “Shag Order”.

That is, quite obviously, the more pure response to music. After all, no bands form with the dream of being speccily rowed over by trainspotting blokes in the no-fun corner of the pub. They form to make ladies drink, dance on tables, and want to have sex with them.

On this basis, we can see that women understand rock music in a way men never will.

Pete Paphides

For us, it’s a throwback to caveman days

In 1994, I and my friend Simon were particularly big Prince fans. So the first time we saw each other after I had interviewed Prince, a sense of renewed excitement at the Purple One’s genius took hold. When Simon arrived, he did so with five carrier bags containing all his Prince records. We went to the front room, laid them out in chronological order, then looked at them. He sort of smiled at me and I smiled at him. Then, not really knowing what else to do, he put them all away again. Do women do this sort of thing? Possibly, but it’s mostly men with whom I find myself having certain conversations.

My mate Nick is the only person I know who buys Seventies reggae singles on the strength of how outlandishly homemade their middles look. My friend Bob is the only other person I know who is clinically completist about the work of the Italo-house production team Groove Groove Melody. By contrast, I remember coming home with my third vinyl copy of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left – this one had the original pink Island imprint – and my wife looking at me in the same way Colin Moulding of XTC’s wife must have looked at him when he brought a woman back from their 1981 Australian tour.

For men, it might be that record collecting is a displaced throwback to hunter-gatherer times. Dragging the carcass of a wild ox back to your North London home is a logistical nightmare. Record collecting is a pleasant alternative. Certainly, in the dusty secondhand record shop where I regularly browse I have only seen one woman there. Well, she wasn’t really a woman. She was my daughter. And when she woke up and realised where she was, she screamed until we finally left the shop.

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