“I think there is a difference nowadays, yeah. Back when we were first starting, there were plenty of women who were clearly very confident in their sexuality and also quite controversial: Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Wendy O. Williams, if you ever saw her. That’s one reason a lot of them became iconic in the way that they did.

“The difference now is that there’s not the feeling that some female artists today are in control in quite the same way. Wendy used to put gaffer tape over her nipples and blow up cars and all that, but there was always a sense that she was very conscious of what she was doing as a woman. She wasn’t just being lusted after.

“Everyone thinks that Miley’s outrageous, but they should watch Wendy and the Plasmatics at Pier 62 in New York in 1980.”

– Dave Stewart, interviewed in PopMatters