Raw audio of Courtney Love performing was posted online by a vengeful sound engineer. But male musicians are rarely exposed like this, so is it just another means to tell women they don’t belong?

Time for a confession: I have, on numerous occasions, found enormous pleasure in listening to Peter Andre and Katie Price’s raw vocals on their 2006 cover of Aladdin’s A Whole New World. Katie Price, being Katie Price, roars “soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky” with the vigour of a leathered Millwall fan. But then Katie Price – self-proclaimed businesswoman-slash-foghorn – never expected to jostle Joni Mitchell out of the limelight with her singing abilities. She wanted to sell 100,000 records with her then husband and dress up as a princess and perform on Loose Women. I don’t judge her for that, and neither should you. If you bought her record expecting art, more fool you.

The same pleasure can’t be gained from the recent footage of Courtney Love that supposedly uncovers her as a talentless rock pretender. The YouTube clip, featuring Love’s isolated vocal and guitar, was recorded on stage at Don Hill’s in New York in 2010, and comes courtesy of a soundman who was hired through the venue to record the show. He claims he was “left standing with a hard drive and an invoice no one seemed to want”, so he shared the footage for the purpose of revenge. After it was posted online came the blogs lamenting the Hole frontwoman’s performance: Noisey claimed it was “EVEN WORSE THAN YOU’D IMAGINE”, Consequence of Sound told us “It will make you cringe!” while Uproxx snarked: “All that ‘Nirvana money,’ and not a single cent went to guitar lessons, apparently.”

The big shock here though, is that Love’s vocal was totally as you’d expect the frontwoman of grunge bands vocals to be – savage, snarling and ravaged by a lifetime of fags and whiskey. And while her guitar playing is notably off, there is something suspiciously mutilated and Shreds-like about the audio. In fact, Flavorwire published a very comprehensive article that looked into the recording process in order to debunk some of the technical aspects of this particular stitch up. “What we are seeing is an incomplete sentence in a very complex novel,” Danielle DePalma, a freelance audio, live sound, and lighting engineer told the site. According to DePalma, the video captures just “two microphone signals out of what I can estimate to be a rough total of 24 instrument signals” and that “the volume [balance] between Love’s guitar and her vocals in this YouTube video seems highly altered from what any of her engineers would have approved or achieved”.

For anyone who has seen Love live, hers is a voice intended bark and fight. Love aims to shove Celebrity Skin down your throat as if it were a fistful of crushed glass and grit rather than a soothing sip of Horlicks. Besides, as the owner of the recording professes himself, he was hired by the venue, not by Love. So why attempt to wreak revenge on her?

Isolated performances of women are often leaked, and almost always with the intention of revealing them to be frauds. It’s hard not to view this kind of online shaming as a form of misogyny, which we often misread as having a simple comedic intention. Men are rarely exposed in the same way. The internet offers us Freddie Mercury and David Bowie’s passionate a cappella cut of Under Pressure, Kurt Cobain’s febrile rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Marilyn Manson, Eminem, the Beatles, the Smiths – all of the greats as heard in studios, after many takes and sometimes using additional effects, but celebrated regardless. Rarely are female artists praised in this way. Instead the “raw vocal” post – be it Taylor Swift during her recent VMA performance or Britney Spears or Katy Perry, all in the midst of choreographed live shows for huge televised performances – is offered up to be mocked. Linda McCartney would recognise the pattern, having been the first woman to be subjected to the treatment, despite the fact everyone knew Paul McCartney didn’t have her on stage because he thought she was the equal of Aretha Franklin.

Rarely do the “truthbarers” present us with male artists whose stage presence is led by charisma and emotion over technical precision, along with an invitation to sneer. This isolated clip of Mark E Smith on stage will leave you disgusted and nauseous! Listen to Nick Cave’s live audio feed and you’ll never pick up a copy of Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus again! Thought Leonard Cohen could sing? This raw audio of Bird on a Wire will change your mind FOREVER! My ears are a’ bleedin’ – Bob Dylan’s REAL vocals uncovered! We listened to John Lydon’s isolated live vocals so you didn’t have to! Those are articles that will never exist.

While I by no means condone failure to pay sound engineers, the shaming of Love is one of those common occurrences that says to female musicians: Dance! Pose! Perform! Be perfect! Be seen! And if possible, not heard.