Hit Rock Songs That The Singers Actually Hated

People hate repeating themselves. Imagine a teacher giving the same lesson year after year, or a parent saying "It's a dog, okay??" over and over to a relentlessly curious toddler. Then there are musicians who perform the same songs a million-bajillion times over the course of a career, long after the emotions/experiences that fostered the song died. This is why Eric Clapton, for instance, stopped singing "Tears in Heaven," because the feelings were no longer there. But how about if a singer really hates a song, even a hit song? It's happened more times than you might think, especially to rock artists.   

Of course, there's no guarantee that every member of a band will love a song. In the case of metal's biggest name, Metallica, drummer Lars Ulrich told Vulture he never wants to hear "Eye of the Beholder" again because "It sounds like it's got two different tempos." Slash from Guns N' Roses called the main guitar line to "Sweet Child O' Mine" a "stupid little riff" and the whole song "a very sappy ballad" (per the Independent). The Who guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend called "Pinball Wizard" "the most clumsy piece of writing I've ever done" (also per the Independent), but at least he didn't have to sing on the track.

Singers definitely have the hardest time with songs they don't like, even if songs don't come from personal, confessional places. On that note, it's well-known how much Radiohead's Thom Yorke reviled "Creep" for years, how much the Gallagher brothers dislike "Wonderwall," how much Kurt Cobain came to detest "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and more. 

Listen, Radiohead diehards: No matter how good certain songs on "Pablo Honey" (1993) and "The Bends" (1995) are, of course the albums are underdeveloped in comparison to future work like "Kid A" or "Hail to the Thief." But back when Radiohead released "Pablo Honey," all anyone knew was the unexpectedly massive blow-out hit, "Creep." Same goes for Radiohead, who in 1993 said that "Creep" had grown so mightily out of their control that lead singer Thom Yorke told Rolling Stone, "it feels like we're doing a cover." All this for a song that Yorke said had "pretty crap" lyrics he wrote in college.

So the song's success made Yorke feel like Radiohead had "sucked Satan's c***," as he told the Guardian, per Live for Live Music. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood relatedly said, "We were like paranoid little mice in cages ... scared of every note not being right." They got so tired of playing "Creep" that Yorke once yelled, "f*** off, we're tired of it" during a concert when fans requested the song (per The Guardian). Another time he called fans of the song "anally retarded" (per Cracked), which we assume means they're slow poopers. 

Eventually, Radiohead took a long hiatus from playing "Creep" at shows, from 2009 to 2016. By 2017, Yorke had warmed enough to his college-years track that he told Rolling Stone, "It's nice to play ["Creep"] for the right reasons," so long as it doesn't feel like "show business. ... The first time I'm feeling the fakes we'll stop." This should make any Radiohead fan happy. After all, does anyone actually want Yorke to wonder what in the hell he's doing here?

We completely get how Warrant's lead singer, Jani Lane, felt about this one, because honestly, 1990's "Cherry Pie" is an embarrassing disaster of a song. "She's my cherry pie / Cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise / Tastes so good, make a grown man cry." These lyrics are so abhorrent that not even an 8-year-old would write them about an actual cherry pie. It's no wonder that Lane in a 2006 VH1 interview you can watch on YouTube said, "My legacy's 'Cherry Pie.' Everything about me is 'Cherry Pie.' I'm a 'Cherry Pie' guy. I could shoot myself in the f***ing head for writing that song." 

To be fair, Lane did have more of a love/hate relationship with "Cherry Pie" rather than a hate/hate one. He later tempered his feelings, as American Songwriter quotes: "No, I didn't hate the song. It's just that when I was young and full of angst ... I wanted everyone to listen to my serious songs." Instead, everyone got a corny song with vocal and guitar rhythms copy-pasted from "I Love Rock 'N Roll" (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, 1981) and "Pour Some Sugar on Me" (Def Leppard, 1987). 

But it's okay, because "Cherry Pie" only took Lane 20 enjoyable minutes to write. After that, it was all downhill. Lane died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. 

Sigh. Can we never hear "Wonderwall" again, please? Or at least replace those endlessly drawn-out, flat-toned, "maybeeeeee," "save meeeeee," "after aaaaaaaaall," and "wonderwaaaaaaaaaall" lines with screaming rubber chicken noises or something. Noel Gallagher, half of the Gallagher brothers' traveling fight show, has the right of it. Per NME, he said that "Wonderwall" "annoys the f*** out of me." Granted, he said this because the song makes him feel too emotionally exposed. He also doesn't like the song because he never intended to record it with an acoustic guitar. But then again, who's playing the song's ultra-repetitive acoustic strumming that every beginner guitarist knows, hm, Noel?

But wait, you say. Even though Noel sang on some Oasis songs, it's Liam who graces us with his nasality on "Wonderwall." Well, that doesn't change anything, because both singers hate the song. Liam's disdain originally sprang from the above-mentioned acoustic strumming, which to him sounded "a little funky," per Far Out Magazine. No, this wasn't a compliment. By 2008, his opinion escalated quite a bit when he said, "I can't f****** stand that f****** song! Every time I have to sing it, I want to gag," per another Far Out article. You have a choice, here, sir. You can always stop. Please.

Well, guess what? Both Gallagher brothers had a chance for redemption when electronica-infused metalcore act Bring Me The Horizon covered "Wonderwall" in 2025. Much to Liam's approval, they did so without any frilly acoustic garbage. In characteristically blunt fashion, Liam said of the rendition on X, "I f****** LOVE it." Fingers crossed for a danceable, metalcore Oasis cover of Bring Me The Horizon's cover of Oasis' OG song.

It was never unclear that R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People," was a lark, right? The video looks like the set of "Pee-wee's Playhouse" or some Nickelodeon show before the slime falls. And Michael Stipe is wearing that orange, backward, jauntily off-center baseball cap while bouncing around with that lady in the red dress as they both look so, so ... happy. Dementedly so. 

We'll put it to you this way: "Shiny Happy People" appears four songs after "Losing My Religion" on 1991's "Out of Time." Which song do you think singer Michael Stipe is more proud of? Right. As Ultimate Guitar quotes him on "Shiny Happy People," "It's a fruity pop song written for children ... If there was one song that was sent into outer space to represent R.E.M. for the rest of time, I would not want it to be 'Shiny Happy People.'"

And yet, this "really fruity, kind of bubblegum song," as Stipe described it to The Quietus, was supposed to be just that. He said that people think of him as a "a very serious kind of poet" and he wanted an R.E.M. song that showed another side. During the writing and recording of "Shiny Happy People," Rolling Stone reports that he and the rest of the band were laughing about the song. But funniest of all, the song was inspired by a Chinese propaganda poster circulating around the time of the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.  

Granted, Stipe told The Quietus that he was "always at peace with" the song. And yet, he was so embarrassed it became a hit that R.E.M. essentially banned it from live sets. 

Yes, Nirvana fans, it's hard to hear that Kurt Cobain hated "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the anthem that defined the formative years of so, so many disaffected youths. As he said in a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, "I can barely ... get through 'Teen Spirit.' I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away." Granted, much of this rancor sprang from Cobain's discomfort with fame, as Nirvana's meteoric rise to success was, and will forever be, linked to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Lamenting his lost pre-fame years, he told Rolling Stone, "For a few years in Seattle, it was the Summer of Love, and it was so great ... it was a celebration of something that no one could put their finger on."

Not only did Cobain hate how "Smells Like Teen Spirit" drove him into the public limelight, he also made fun of its music. His guitar part was "such a clichéd riff," as he told RS, that bassist Krist Novoselic called it "so ridiculous." Cobain intentionally wanted to make "the ultimate pop song" in the vein of Pixies, one of his favorite bands. Irony of ironies, that song took off in such a big way that it defined a generation and shifted the course of musical history. 

Cobain also clarified in the Rolling Stone interview that his ire might have gotten directed toward another song had it been the song that made Nirvana famous. He cites as an example "Drain You" off 1991's "Nevermind," the same album as "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Let's just be glad that it and other tracks didn't get tainted in Cobain's eyes like Nirvana's biggest hit.