Why does Emiliana Torrini hate me so?

Last week I gave a favourable review to Icelandic singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini, praising her cute-meets-sexy persona, applauding the mischief and playfulness in her music and even suggesting she could have a whopping hit on her hands with the reggae lilt of Me and Armini. However, it appears Ms Torrini was not best pleased. On stage at Brighton at the weekend, she launched into a bizarre and epic rant against the review and me personally, culminating with the comically rude insult: "He writes with his penis."

It appears Torrini's ire had been provoked by my suggestion that she had introduced the song Bleeder as "a song about fucking". In fact, she informed the Brighton audience, it's a song about "a beloved who lost a brother". In which case I'm very, very sorry to have misquoted her. But I do wonder how it happened. The singer has a strong Icelandic accent and it is sometimes difficult to catch exactly what she says. So I went back and looked up the lyrics to Bleeder.

"Lay thee down
Park your head upon my pillow
Naked trees they dress in crows,"

she begins, without taking too much out of context. The chorus that I enjoyed so much in Manchester goes:

"Oh, lay with me.
Oh, closer to my body, oh.
When things go wrong, you'll find you're a bleeder."

I suppose it could feasibly be about a beloved who lost her brother. But it could just as likely be a song about the perils of laying on a bed of nails on acid. Without the benefit of the artist's explanation, I wouldn't expect too many people would conclude that it was anything other than a good, old-fashioned, if slightly surreal, song about shagging.

This would not exactly break the mould, because Torrini has something of a history of raunch. She co-wrote Kylie's steamy Slow – "Don't wanna rush it/ Let the rhythm pull you in/ It's here so touch it." During the hour or so she was on stage in Manchester, she managed to describe a situation of "pure happiness" involving "cocktails and dirty men", refer cheekily to "something going wrong down there" and dedicate one song to "my Spanish pervert". And yet she expects us to believe she has been terribly wronged, coming over like a cross between Mary Whitehouse and Mary Poppins.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me. In 2007, the Courteeners had a pop at me on stage after I wrote about their strong Manchester accents. They also had a similar rumble with this paper's Maddy Costa. A journo friend of mine, a massive Smiths fan, found herself being publicly slated by Morrissey for referring to his "paunch" in an otherwise rave review. Then again, it's perhaps easier to find journalists who have not been slated by Morrissey. Some artists have written songs sticking it back to errant hacks – such as Nick Cave's Scum, Stereophonics' Mr Writer and, of course, Mozzer's non-specific Journalists Who Lie. Rock writer Mick Wall was once told to "suck my fuckin' dick" by Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose, after an offending review, which also prompted Rose to write the song Get in the Ring. Bizarrely, Wall was defended by guitarist Slash, who declared: "Axl is an asshole."

Compared to getting a pasting from Axl Rose, being savaged by Emiliana Torrini does feel a bit harmless, not least because I am bigger than her and possibly have a thicker skin. But I can assure her that I do not write with my penis. I'm sure there's a demand for that sort of thing in the darker corners of the internet, but not in the Guardian (no "upstanding organ" jokes please).

But on a more serious note – read the review yourselves. Does Ms Torrini have a point, or should she and other artists who take offence at the tiniest thing grow up, be grateful for the interest and positive coverage, and stop being so precious?