On hearing their songs, a conscientious feminist would surely stop listening to AC/DC and build a bonfire out of the band’s back catalogue. But, much as one feels bad about it, one just can’t stop listening to them. While there are elements of AC/DC’s work that makes people uncomfortable and one or two that are unequivocally vile, there are much more that simply, through force of undiluted, old-fashioned rock’n’roll swagger, simply makes people punch the air with joy. What is the new generation of young women to think of a band that cautions women not to resist their advances and reduces them to a series of body parts?

AC/DC was one of the first bands many heard as children and they instinctively loved them and failed to notice that when Bon Scott pronounced his desire for Rosie, he was saying it despite her not being a perfect size eight. Right now, the details of AC/DC’s innuendo may go over a child's head, but as the child gets older, all will become clear.

Fans have a different perspective. The band’s defenders will often point to the bawdy humour in their songs. The big-breasted, thunder-thighed women and hopelessly horny boys that inhabit them bring to mind saucy seaside postcards and Carry On films. In 2004, in an interview with Sylvie Simmons for Mojo magazine, guitarist and band founder Angus Young remarked, “We’re pranksters more than anything else,” while his brother Malcolm noted: “We’re not like some macho band. We take the music far more seriously than we take the lyrics, which are just throwaway lines.” But if the band members are merely pranksters, then women are their punchlines.

 

It comes as a slight "whuh?" today to learn that Back in Black is the second biggest-selling record of all time. Every year, this gets harder to explain. AC/DC's Back in Black is a preposterous, dragonoid record. It's built on casual sexism, eye-rolling double entendres, a highly questionable attitude to sexual consent ("Don't you struggle/ Don't you fight/ Don't you worry/ Cos it's your turn tonight"), a penchant for firearms, and a crass celebration of the unthinking macho hedonism that killed the band's original singer.

There’s no delicate way to put this. According to their songs, it's the men who come over as passive and hopeless, awestruck in the presence of sexual partners more experienced and adept than them. If we’re looking at power balance, there are plenty of instances where it is stacked in the women’s favour. This can be seen in Whole Lotta Rosie. (Ain’t no fairy story / Ain’t no skin and bones / But you give it all you got / Weighin’ in at nineteen stone.)

Now, though, a question has been raised whether they are really a band to be celebrated. This is because people love AC/DC. 10 years olds adore Rock’n’Roll Train, in which singer Brian Johnson sings: “Take it to the spot/You know she’ll make it really hot.” They also love You Shook Me All Night Long in which Johnson’s lover is a “fast machine” who keeps “her motor clean” even though they are not aware of the meaning of the lyrics yet. Let’s see what happens when kids grow up and realise they've been singing those songs their whole childhood!