Rockers Who Hate To Play Their No. 1 Hits

There are millions of people out there who dream of being professional musicians. For the lucky few who not only manage to have a successful career playing music but also become household names with No.1 hit songs, you would think there could be no more perfect joy than playing their chart-topping tune live to an audience of devoted fans. But, according to several of the world's biggest artists, sometimes playing one of their biggest songs is, at best, a chore, and can even be downright painful. Occasionally, they will leave these No.1s off their setlists completely, knowing they will be unable to fake enthusiasm for them on stage.

It might seem a bit diva-ish to risk disappointing fans or to complain about a successful song, but these artists have also been surprisingly candid with interviewers about which of their hits they despise and why. Whether it be a Billy Joel classic or Oasis' breakthrough U.S. hit, here are a few rockers who hate to play their biggest chart-toppers.

Despite it spending 10 weeks at No.1 on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart, both of the infamous Gallagher brothers — Liam and Noel — of Oasis used to hate playing "Wonderwall" live. In 2008, Liam bluntly said of the 1995 hit (via the  Irish Examiner), "Every time I have to sing it, I want to gag. Problem is, it was a big, big tune for us." So big that even once Oasis broke up and Liam embarked on a solo career, he knew he had to keep performing the song for his fans at almost every gig.

His brother, who had actually written the world-famous tune, felt similarly about it, and thankfully, he managed to explain his reasons more deeply than Liam had, albeit with even more F-bombs. In a 2020 interview on Matt Morgan's Funny How? podcast, Noel talked about a realization he had at the final gig of a tour decades earlier, saying, "I remember playing Wonderwall and thinking, 'I'll never play this f****** song again.' We could never get it right, do you know what I mean? ... I used to play it on electric guitar, and I f****** hated it. It was always too fast ... It was f****** awful."

Eventually, Noel came to the conclusion that thousands of coffee shop troubadours had before him: "It wasn't until we stopped taking drugs that we thought 'acoustic might work better on that.'"

Coldplay has raked in a staggering amount of money while on tour, but that doesn't mean they enjoy playing all the songs from their deep catalogue of hits live. In fact, according to front man Chris Martin, the band almost never chooses to play their 2005 tune "Speed of Sound" at their concerts. While it spent nine weeks at No.1 on Billboard's Adult Alternative Airplay chart, Martin doesn't think the recorded version was as good as it should have been.

In 2011, Martin told the University of East Anglia's student newspaper, Concrete, that "Speed of Sound" was his least favorite Coldplay tune to play "because we never got it right." That same year, in an interview with Howard Stern, the shock jock asked whether there were any hit songs he'd written that he thought were terrible, and Martin immediately answered that the only one was "Speed of Sound." He even jokingly tried to get out of playing a few bars of it. He explained his personal feeling that the recording not being good enough makes him not want to play it, even if he could improve it live. "It pains me," Martin said, adding that when it comes to concerts, "We don't play it ... because an audience can pick up real fast if you're not convinced by something."

The inspiration behind Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" was a younger person telling him that people had it much better in the '50s. Joel came away feeling like he needed to let the younger generation know that the world had been difficult back in his day, too. But while the public fell in love with the song, propelling it to No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1989, Joel doesn't like playing it. In Fred Schruers' "Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography," the musician spoke negatively of the melody, describing it as "... a droning mosquito."

Still, Joel doesn't think the whole song is bad. In a 1994 talk for students at Oxford University, he said, "I think the lyrics are fairly clever. I think I did a pretty good job with the words." Unfortunately, as he told Howard Stern in 2010, even the part he is proud of makes performing the song a nightmare. He said that remembering the famously rapid-fire lyrics live is "tremendously difficult. As long as I can pick up the first word of whatever verse is coming up... and then I'm looking at the audience hoping to see somebody mouthing the words ... if somebody's gotten the wrong words I'm screwed. I'm dead."

Elton John's bouncy tune "Crocodile Rock" spent three weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the winter of 1973. Given the song's success and staying power, John's thoughts on playing it are surprising. In 2021, he told then-Watford FC footballer Troy Deeney's "Deeney Talks" podcast that while he is well aware of the song's popularity with his audiences and fans, "The last time I have to sing 'Crocodile Rock' I will probably throw a party."

It's not the deepest true story behind a popular Elton John song, and with such a deep roster of hits — including eight other Billboard Hot 100 No.1's — to pick from, you could understand if he just chose never to play it during his many tours. But as he reflected, "Who am I to say, 'I am not going to play it,' because I play to amuse people and to entertain people. But I have to say, when the last show is done at the end of the tour, I will never ever sing that song again."

While the song's other creator, John's longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin, is not musical and would never be called on to play the song live, the fact is, he probably wouldn't want to, even if he knew how. In 2011, he told Esquire, "'Crocodile Rock' is a strange dichotomy because I don't mind having created it, but it's not something I would listen to."