36 Popular Songs That Artists Regret Creating (2 of 7)

Misery Business – Paramore

Despite this song being a fan favorite amongst Paramore listeners, Hayley Williams officially nixed this song from future live shows back in 2018. As the song grew in popularity so too did discussion of it and online some were discussing the “anti-feminist” lyricism in the track. In particular the line “Once a whore, you’re nothing more, I’m sorry that’ll never change.”

Williams stated: “This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should. We feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while.”

You’re Beautiful – James Blunt

This song was dropped in 2005 and became massively popular. Though part of the reason for that was due to it being played almost all the time. After the song’s release, the English singer-songwriter stated that he became annoyed with it being so oversaturated:

“[It] was force-fed down people’s throats, and it became annoying, and then people started to associate the artist with the same word.”

Blunt further added the over-popularity of it painted him as an insanely serious person.

I Kissed a Girl – Katy Perry

This song came out in 2008 around a time where the sexual conversation was very different to what it is today. Back then, a song like this was scandalous and not as accepted if it were released in the present day.

This is the sort of stance Katy Perry takes at this point with this song: “That was in 2008 when it came out. I think we’ve really changed, conversationally, in the past 10 years. We’ve come a long way. Bisexuality wasn’t as talked about back then, or any type of fluidity. If I had to write that song again, I probably would make an edit on it. Lyrically, it has a couple of stereotypes in it. Your mind changes so much in 10 years, and you grow so much. What’s true for you can evolve.”

Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana

The late Kurt Cobain grew to resent this song in particular despite it being a massive hit. He went out of his way to not play this song at live shows. His reasoning was over-saturation:

“Everyone has focused on that song so much. The reason it gets a big reaction is people have seen it on MTV a million times. It’s been pounded into their brains. But I think there are so many other songs that I’ve written that are as good, if not better, than that song, like ‘Drain You.’ That’s definitely as good as ‘Teen Spirit’. I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it. Maybe if it was as big as ‘Teen Spirit’, I wouldn’t like it as much.”

Creep – Radiohead

Another massively popular song, the band reached a point where the song was starting to annoy them. It drove them to refuse to play the song at all in live shows.

“We seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again. It was incredibly stultifying.”

It also didn’t help that after the song was complete, audience members would simply get up and leave. There was also a point where Thom Yorke yelled “F—k off, we’re tired of it” at an audience after requesting the song.