Thought this might be an interesting thread to hear of artists who have admitted they don't like some of their songs

I know Toni Braxton turned her nose up at Unbreak My Heart when she first heard the demo and was extremely reluctant to record it, saying she didn't want to be bogged down with another slow love ballad.

KT Tunstall dismissed her entire Eye To The Telescope album with branding it as being nothing more than "frivolous pop ditties"

I also believe Kurt Cobain was never sold on Smells Like Teen Spirit and loathed having to perform it.

More please?

One of most famous examples is Robert Plant who loathes Stairway to Heaven. There's a story that a radio station in America was seeking donations so they didn't have to play Stairway ever again. Plant heard about this & donated $500.

Noel Gallagher hates quite a few off WTSMG and pretty much all of Be Here Now

I remember reading once that Beyoncé hated the Destiny's Child song 'Bootylicious'. She wrote it on the plane to Japan and obviously it samples Stevie Nicks. She has performed a section of it quite a lot though (even recently) so not sure how true it Is that she hates it.

R.E.M are seemingly not keen on Shiny Happy People.

I suspect all those acts who hated some of their own hits, had no problem coining the royalties though!

Britney Spears loathes a lot of her earlier work, she think its cheesy and prefers to perform the newer stuff.

Don't blame her, I always hated Bootylicious. But then, DC peaked with TWOTW and their material afterwards never reached those heights again. I guess LaTavia and LeToya were the real creative forces within the group.

Britney hates her BOMT/Oops stuff
P!nk hates her first album Cant Take Me Home
Cher doesnt like pretty much all her stuff lol
Mel C said she didnt like the Spice Girls 2007 comeback single 'Headlines' [but said last year it grew on her]
Madonna particularly hates Holiday [but think she now hates most of her early work]
JLS hated Club is Alive [even i didnt really like it and i was a JLS fan

I read that the sugababes hated Get Sexy

Britney apparently hates Sometimes. She last sang it on the Dream Within A Dream your. She does sing some other early songs in Vegas though. I think she sings BOMT the song, Oops, Crazy, Stronger and a few others.

The Backstreet Boys don't have fond things to say about 'If You Want To Be A Good Girl (Get Yourself A Bad Boy)' from the Backstreet's Back album. They worked with Robert "Mutt" Lange, but they wanted him to do what he did best with the song, only to have that as the end result.

I like the song and I know other fans do as well, but they're not that keen apparently.

I'd completely forgotten about that song! I was thinking "They had a comeback single? How did I miss that?", then I started playing it, "Ahh, that one!".

Yet she doesn't dislike "independent women" which is an awful song.

I may be wrong, but I believe Paul McCartney said he wished he had never written "Wonderful Christmastime".

Tbh, I can't say that I blame him - it's an awful song. (Made even worse by the fact that it was played regularly in December when I was working at WH Smith when doing my A-levels.)

Brian May dislikes "Don't Stop Me Now", Roger Taylor hates "Another One Bites The Dust". Freddie Mercury reputedly detested a Queen album track from A Kind Of Magic called "Gimme The Prize (Kurgan's Theme)".

Van Morrison and Neil Young hate any of their popular stuff, but that's more related to general disdain for their fans rather than the songs themselves.

As you can imagine, artists generally famous for one specific song have a very love-hate relationship with them.

Westlife are a pretty obvious example with some songs. Mainly in the later days, but I know they really disliked Loneliness Knows Me By Name from the Coast to Coast album. They really disliked Miss You Nights (and I think Mandy at first, although they had a horrible habit of singing it on almost every tour and it was vair tedious), and by the end I think it'd be harder to name a song they did like. Why they released Lighthouse I have no idea, and I watched an interview where they were asked about the meaning of Lighthouse and it was painfully obvious that they were just not interested anymore.

And then Guns'n'Roses and Sweet Child o' Mine, initially, at least. It was initially disliked (by Slash, at least) and started at a joke, but obviously things changed and it ended up becoming brilliant!

I know Kylie didn't like What Kind of Fool (Heard it all Before)

She hates, hates, HATES her second ever single, Sometimes.

Kate Bush said she was embarrassed by her early stuff explicitly mentioning 'O England my Lionheart'. She also dismissed her film of the 1993 'The Red Shoes' album called 'The Line, The Cross and the Curve' as utter bollocks.

Nina Simone hated My Baby Just Cares for Me

Frank Sinatra hated My Way

George Michael hates Bad Boys by Wham

Radiohead will not play Creep anymore live after finding out that some people committed suicide while playing it

Erasure don't like 'Run to the Sun', which is pretty obvious when you watch their 'Top of the Pops' performance of it. Andy Bell also isn't a fan of their 'Loveboat' album.

Martin L Gore said that he wasn't a big fan of Depeche Mode's earlier songs but loves pretty much everything they've released since 'Black Celebration'.

I don't get Britney's opposition to Sometimes, its not the worst song in the world she has way worse stuff than Sometimes.


I don't blame them, this just didn't work for me at all. About a Girl wasn't as big in charts but I felt it was more them.

I love her earlier stuff, like it much more than her more recent stuff. Sometimes is a guilty pleasure


I've come to like Get Sexy. It's still not Sugababes but it's a fun song. I love About A Girl though, but to be fair I'm a fan of Sweet 7 as a whole so I'm used to having unpopular Sugababes opinions

I know Mutya hates Round Round and Red Dress, even her version of it. Heidi must dislike a few songs as I remember her saying Taller In More Ways was her first album where she didn't dislike any of the songs.

I'm sure I read Mariah really dislikes a lot of her earlier material, she wasn't a fan of Hero when she first recorded it. She ended up having to sing them this year due to the fact a lot of the singles she disliked were number one songs.

Madonna- Hates Material Girl (and especially the nickname it coined for her). Also she has gone on record as saying she can't even remember her single Gambler but then again can anyone ;p.

That was one of the few songs she wrote entirely on her own and can't remember it