They misguided us all. Me and so many other people, we all thought Kraftwerk stood for nerdy, cold and mathematic music. We never truly appreciated the romantic appeal of highway, trains, computers and other pieces of technology. They fooled us at concerts, at least the ones in this millennium; 99% of the audience consisted of spectacled physics students. I began to see it differently when I read the interview with Ralph Hütter in The Guardian. When he talked about Germany in the late ’60’s, how disconnected it was from America and England in particular and how it offered Kraftwerk the opportunity to create something in an open space, on an empty canvas, something began to dawn. If you build something and start a narrative, the first point of reference is, of course, technology. How else can you build?

And then my Ipod decided to make me listen to ‘Neon Lights’ (1978, from The Man Machine album), a song so delicate and melancholic, it almost made me weep. Neon Lights contains more emotion than most bands have in their full back catalogue.

So here’s to all women. Forget about Coldplay, go to a Kraftwerk show instead. Don’t believe popular misconception; they changed the trajectory of music, and the definition of emotion as well.