Note: our featured image shows ‘default woman picture’ chosen to make punkgirldiaries look like other blogs …

Oooooh! Lovely data! Apparently it’s the new oil – the commodity that is valuable and up for purchase. Data is everything; it tells you how everyone thinks, behaves and spends their money. C’mon, let’s just get a heap of data and find out what you should do to be a successful woman in music.

We’ve looked at top website Best Ever Albums to find out which women artists are highly rated over the last 16 years by the 40,000 subscribers. We know there’s a major flaw because this official-looking and calculable data is just the opinions of the music nerds with time on their hands. But, hey!

There is a clear pathway to success for women, according to the Top-Ranked Artists section and it’s nothing to do with dancing in your pants or singing love songs. Based on the data, the best strategy for a woman in music is:

Play an instrument, possibly bass guitar, in a band consisting mainly of men …

and probably don’t bother singing too much either.

In the rankings, you mightn’t be surprised that the top spot goes to The Beatles. There’s Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead in the top 10. But Kate Bush – usually cited everywhere as a great female artist – only comes in at number 56, and poor old Madonna is at 172. It does seem totally skewed to white male Western bands – we kept scrolling down looking for Aretha Franklin and there she is at 210, just above Nina Simone at 214.

But there are women in there – and they are the ones we maybe need to emulate to get popular! Hopefully you know that punkgirldiaries doesn’t do those crappy money-grabbing blogposts where you click click click – then watch about 200 adverts to count down to the number one thing you want to see. No, we’ll start with the most popular woman musician and show you the next few, even though we’re not at all keen on these lists that rank people. Here goes then – the ten most popular women in music based on the albums they played on:

Velvet Underground Drummer Maureen Tucker

The Pixies bass player Kim Deal

Talking Heads bass player Tina Weymouth

My Bloody Valentine bass player Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher on guitar and vocals

Smashing Pumpkins bass player D’arcy Wretzky

Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks and keyboardist Christine McVie

Songwriter, singer and producer Bjork

Sonic Youth bass player Kim Gordon

So, today’s data takeaway says that women in the band is OK in moderation. Maybe a ratio of 1:4 works for the fans at the moment? Playing bass is a good idea, or another instrument – just get away from the centre of the stage, will you? These days, everyone tells us that data is the way forwards, and we genuinely want to tackle that gender gap. We’ve done the maths; you take what you will from our analysis. Either way, pick up an instrument and join a band with whoever you think you can work with.

And let’s end with a thought-provoking life-affirming quote, shall we?