Who are the top ten bands of all time?

According to Noel Gallagher's greatest bands list, a truly great group couldn't feature a female artist. Nonsense, says Emma Cowing, as she proves with her own top ten

OH, NOEL. It's been a while since you updated your iTunes playlist hasn't it? Otherwise you might have noticed that these days, there are almost as many women making music as men, and some of them are even rather good at it.

Yes Noel Gallagher, lead singer of Oasis and self-proclaimed rock god, has been stirring it again, this time listing the ultimate top ten bands of all time, divined using a somewhat eccentric set of rules. On the band's blog, Gallagher stated as his criteria: "No solo artists allowed. No female artists allowed. No collectives allowed." How terribly 1950s of him.

It is interesting to note that Gallagher's top ten, whose thumping predictability ranks the Beatles at number one and goes on to list groups such as The Who, the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, consists entirely of bands made up of middle-aged white men strumming guitars. Bands in fact, just like Oasis.

Of course creating lists of top bands, movies, actors and so on is – as ably demonstrated by the neurotic list-making character Rob Fleming in Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity – a specialisation of a certain type of obsessive.

But we really couldn't let Gallagher's outdated assertions go unchallenged. So here is my own list of the top ten female bands of all time.

As with any list of course, this is subjective. Where, some will cry, is Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees? What about Salt'n'Pepa? Why have you put in a predominantly male band like the Velvet Underground?

I acknowledge my list is not perfect. Principally because there are so many fantastic female-influenced bands out there, I couldn't possibly fit them all into one top ten list.

But I have focused on bands whose musical influence has travelled further than those middle-aged white men strumming guitars, as well as groups that I think simply wouldn't have existed were it not for the talented women behind them. Listen and learn, Noel.

Noel Gallagher's top ten

1 The Beatles
2 THE ROLLING STONES
3 THE WHO
4 SEX PISTOLS
5 THE KINKS
6 THE LA'S
7 PINK FLOYD
8 THE BEE GEES
9 THE SPECIALS
10 (PETER GREEN'S)
FLEETWOOD MAC


Emma Cowing's top ten

THE BANGLES

MORE than just the band behind the karaoke classic Eternal Flame, The Bangles personified the liberal 1980s attitude, where women wore the trousers (often, in the Bangles' case, literally) and rewrote the rules of pop music. Along with their contemporaries, the GoGos, their sound was spiky pop with a feminist edge, giving them huge teen appeal.


THE SUGARCUBES

BEFORE Björk became the wacky soloist with the bunches, she was the driving force behind Icelandic dance band the Sugarcubes. Her gymnastic voice proved female dance vocalists could be far more than window dressing, while her lyrics leant an endearing eccentricity that made the band loved by millions.

FLEETWOOD MAC

NO, NOT Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, we're talking about the Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie era. The Rumours album, much of it written by McVie, was by far the band's most successful. Green may have turned Fleetwood Mac into an international name, but it was Nicks and McVie who made sure they stayed that way.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

IT WAS Andy Warhol who insisted that the Velvet Underground include three songs sung by the beautiful and tortured Nico on their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. While the record is undeniably packed full of good songs, it is Nico's low, gravelly tones that made the album the classic it is today.

HOLE

COURTNEY Love may have spent the majority of her Hole career fending off questions about her more successful husband, Kurt Cobain, but Hole was a mighty influence on the Seattle grunge scene, energising the punky, hard-edged end of the genre and proving that a no-nonsense all-female rock band dressed in baby-doll dresses could kick just as much ass as Nirvana.

SONIC YOUTH

KIM Gordon and Sonic Youth have become to alt rock what the Spice Girls are to bubblegum pop – an essential part of the canon. Known as the godmother of Riot Grrrl – the female punk movement that spawned bands including Bikini Kill and L7 – Gordon's vision for intelligent, challenging rock music lives on today.

GARBAGE

Edinburgh-born Shirley Manson was the frontwoman for this late 1990s American supergroup, a punky, depressive yet glamorous looking redhead who growled seductively at the MTV generation with a voice that lay somewhere between Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks, and truly made you think she really only was happy when it rained. As well as churning out a range of top ten hits and touring the world several times (with only the odd stop back home to see the folks), she has gone on to inspire a brand new generation of hard-edged and glamorous female vocalists such as industrial queen Peaches, white hip-hop tyrant Uffie, and the Gossip's Beth Ditto. These days she can be found hanging out in Los Angeles duetting with her friend and fellow frontwoman Gwen Stefani. Now that's girlpower.

THE SUPREMES

THE original girlband broke hearts, moulds and records. The most successful Motown act ever, they churned out the hits, covering a range of genres all the way from doo-wop to disco. Matched only by the Beatles for popularity in the 1960s and with an ever evolving line-up, they were the ultimate Motown machine. And, as a bonus, they gave us Diana Ross.

THE SLITS

THE first female punk band formed a year after the Sex Pistols and in 1977 were supporting the Clash on their White Riot tour. With a brash, raw sound and a provocative name, they represented a new breed of female collective that refused to be bound by the conventions of record company suits. They reformed in 2006 and earlier this year toured America.

BLONDIE

IT'S no exaggeration to say that if there had been no Debbie Harry, there would have been no Blondie. The rest of the band may have consisted of earnest, musical young men, but it was Harry's electrifying presence, her stunning looks and her steely, ice-cold voice that turned Blondie into a phenomenon of the late 1970s and early 80s. Comfortably straddling the punk rock and new wave movements, Blondie's bankability came from Harry's uncanny ability to communicate directly with her audience, slowly seducing them with her zombie-like voice. She was quite unlike anything the music world had seen before. The group disbanded in 1982 but reformed in 1997, only to discover a whole new generation of fans as captivated by Heart of Glass as their parents had been nearly 20 years previously.