1. Go through your piece and flip the gender of your descriptive phrases’ subjects. Are there any that sound ludicrous as a result?

Descriptions of musicians’ looks are just the tip of the iceberg here. Let’s play a game: Could you imagine the following phrase being written, never mind getting through an editor and being published in a major newspaper:

‘Without straying too far off the indie grid, he’s the perfect antidote to Bon Iver-Radiohead overload—dare we say, a skinnier Damian Abraham, a more stable Kurt Cobain?’

No, of course not. Because a) it’s just a jumble of names, b) just how big is this ‘grid,’ and c) mocking the ‘stability’ of someone dead after a life marked by turbulence is outright gross.