10 Famous Musicians Who Grew to Resent Their Biggest Hits

Artists pour their souls into recording studios, but success can create a peculiar kind of regret when one song comes to overshadow everything else they have accomplished. Fans may cherish a familiar anthem forever, while the musician who recorded it must sing the same words night after night, answer the same questions, and watch one moment from the past define an evolving career.

Some performers came to dislike the songs themselves. Others hated the recording process, resented how the public interpreted the lyrics, or simply became exhausted by decades of repetition. Whatever the reason, these ten musicians discovered that creating a beloved hit does not necessarily mean wanting to hear it again.

Related: 10 Deceivingly Happy Songs That Hide Dark Meanings

10 Miley Cyrus—”Party in the U.S.A.”

“Party in the U.S.A.” became one of Miley Cyrus’s signature songs, but the teenage singer never felt that it represented her musical identity. Cyrus did not write the track and admitted shortly after its release that she did not normally listen to pop music. She had not even heard a Jay-Z song despite singing about one in the opening verse. In her words, the song was “not even my style of music.”

Cyrus recorded it while filming The Last Song in 2009, and she originally viewed it as little more than another song needed for an upcoming release. Instead, it became a multi-platinum hit and an unofficial patriotic anthem.

She has since shown more affection for its place in her career, but her early discomfort revealed an unusual problem for a teenage performer: The song that sounded least like her became the song millions of listeners associated with her. Success arrived wrapped in a musical identity she had never chosen for herself.^[1]

9 Nirvana—”Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Kurt Cobain never intended “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a sarcastic attack on commercial music. If anything, he was deliberately trying to write an especially powerful pop song. He later admitted that Nirvana borrowed the Pixies’ technique of moving between quiet verses and explosive choruses. What he could not have anticipated was that the track would become the defining anthem of grunge and turn three musicians from Seattle into international stars.

The song’s overwhelming success eventually made it difficult for Cobain to perform sincerely. He complained that he could barely make it through the number on bad nights and sometimes wanted to put down his guitar and walk away. He was also self-conscious about the main riff’s resemblance to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”

Audiences continued treating the opening chords like a call to worship, while Cobain increasingly saw the song as an obligation. Nirvana had wanted to make a great pop record. They succeeded so completely that its creator could no longer escape it.^[2]

8 Radiohead—”Creep”

“Creep” rescued Radiohead from a discouraging start when its 1993 rerelease became an international success. Unfortunately, it also threatened to trap the band inside four minutes of anguished guitar rock. Thom Yorke was dissatisfied with the lyrics, while the other members became frustrated that audiences and interviewers seemed interested in little else. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood described the repetition as living through the same few minutes of their lives again and again.

The song’s famous bursts of guitar noise were not a calculated attempt to sabotage the recording, as legend sometimes claims. Greenwood was checking whether his guitar was loud enough, and the accidental sound proved so effective that the band kept it. Radiohead eventually stopped treating “Creep” as a regular part of its concerts, playing it only sporadically as the group moved into more experimental music.

Yorke later acknowledged that it could still be enjoyable under the right circumstances, but if a performance began feeling false, he wanted to stop. Their first major hit had become a song they could tolerate only on their own terms.^[3]

7 Madonna—”Like a Virgin”

“Like a Virgin” transformed Madonna from a rising dance-pop singer into one of the most recognizable performers in the world. Its provocative title, unforgettable MTV performance, and six-week stay at the top of the American charts made it inseparable from her public image. Decades later, however, Madonna admitted it was the song she least wanted to encounter in her daily life.

The problem was not necessarily the original recording. It was the experience of hearing her younger self everywhere she went. Madonna complained that people apparently assumed she wanted to hear her own music while shopping or eating, and “Like a Virgin” seemed to follow her more persistently than anything else.

She has continued performing the song, frequently transforming it into slower, darker, or more theatrical arrangements. Reinvention allowed her to reclaim a hit that nostalgia might otherwise have frozen permanently in 1984. The public wanted the familiar anthem, but Madonna rarely gave it back in its original form.^[4]

6 Beastie Boys—”Fight for Your Right”

The Beastie Boys intended “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” as a ridiculous parody of macho party anthems. Unfortunately, the people being mocked failed to notice the joke. Rowdy audiences embraced the song as a sincere celebration of drinking, destructive parties, and adolescent rebellion. The accompanying music video strengthened that interpretation by showing the trio invading a painfully respectable gathering and destroying everything in sight.

As the Beastie Boys matured, they became increasingly uncomfortable with both the song and the obnoxious personas surrounding their early career. Mike D worried that it had reinforced values directly opposed to the group’s own beliefs. The trio removed it from regular concert performances and dismissed it harshly in the liner notes of a later compilation.

Years afterward, their short film Fight for Your Right Revisited returned to those exaggerated characters with an even more absurd cast. It allowed the group to reclaim the satire after spending decades watching listeners miss it entirely.^[5]

5 Frank Sinatra—”Strangers in the Night”

“Strangers in the Night” gave Frank Sinatra one of the greatest commercial victories of his career. Released in 1966, it reached number one in the United States and Britain, won multiple Grammy Awards, and introduced the world to the improvised “doo-be-doo-be-doo” ending that became one of his most imitated vocal moments. Sinatra reportedly knew the recording would become a success. But knowing that didn’t make him like it.

According to his son, Frank Sinatra Jr., the singer’s contempt became obvious whenever the song appeared on a concert set list. Sinatra mocked it during performances, altered the lyrics, and made little effort to conceal his irritation. The sentimental ballad audiences adored had become another demand placed upon a performer with hundreds of better songs in his repertoire.

However, he continued singing it because ticket buyers expected to hear it. “Strangers in the Night” brought Sinatra awards, sales, and one of his most enduring catchphrases. It also sentenced him to decades of performing a song he could barely stand.^[6]

4 Billy Joel—”We Didn’t Start the Fire”

Billy Joel built “We Didn’t Start the Fire” around a rapid procession of historical names and events spanning the years from his birth through 1989. Listeners turned it into a number-one hit, teachers brought it into classrooms, and generations attempted to memorize its relentless inventory of Cold War crises, politicians, celebrities, wars, scandals, and cultural milestones.

Joel has remained proud of the concept and lyrics, but he’s far less generous about the melody. During a 2014 concert in Toronto, he lost his place, stopped the band, and complained that one wrong word could derail the entire song. He then suggested abandoning it before the disappointed audience changed his mind. Joel called its repetitive tune one of the worst melodies he had written, noting that only the words changed from verse to verse.

He eventually resumed the performance and finished the song. That moment captured his complicated relationship with it perfectly: He may dislike the music, but thousands of people who paid to see him still expect him to start the fire.^[7]

3 The Who—”Pinball Wizard”

Pete Townshend did not write “Pinball Wizard” because his rock opera desperately needed a song about arcade games. He wrote it partly to win over influential music critic Nik Cohn, whose initial reaction to Tommy had disappointed him. Cohn loved pinball, so Townshend hastily transformed his deaf, non-speaking, and blind protagonist into a brilliant pinball player. The addition immediately improved the critic’s opinion of the project.

Townshend remained far less impressed with what he had created. He later called “Pinball Wizard” awful, embarrassing, and the clumsiest piece of writing he had ever produced. Other people heard something entirely different. The band members loved the demo, the song became a hit, and its energetic acoustic opening grew into one of the Who’s most recognizable musical passages. It also became crucial to the story of Tommy, inspiring elaborate sequences in the stage and film adaptations. A song Townshend considered a calculated attempt to please one critic became an anthem that the Who would perform for generations.^[8]

2 James Blunt—“You’re Beautiful”

James Blunt does not hate “You’re Beautiful” as much as headlines sometimes suggest. What he came to resent was the relentless promotion that turned the 2005 ballad into an international source of irritation. Radio stations played it constantly, advertisers adopted it, and listeners interpreted it as a tender declaration of romantic love. Blunt later joked that the record company had forced the song down everyone’s throats until even he understood why people found it annoying.

The romantic interpretation bothered him for another reason. The lyrics describe a man who sees a former girlfriend with somebody else, fixates upon her, and accepts that they will never be together. Blunt has characterized the narrator as intoxicated and behaving more like an obsessive stranger than an ideal romantic hero.

Nevertheless, couples continued selecting it for weddings. The singer responded to the backlash with the self-deprecating humor that later became his trademark. He was not apologizing for writing the song so much as for a world that refused to stop playing—and misunderstanding—it.^[9]

1 Lady Gaga—“Telephone”

With Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, a pounding dance beat, and an elaborate music video involving prison, poisoned food, and a high-speed escape, “Telephone” appeared designed to become a pop-culture landmark. It succeeded. The 2010 collaboration became an international hit, while its nearly ten-minute video inspired endless discussion about hidden meanings and the possibility of a sequel.

Gaga’s own reaction was considerably less enthusiastic. She called “Telephone” the song she found hardest to listen to and described its production and mixing process as stressful. She disliked the video even more, believing too many competing ideas had overwhelmed it. The result was especially frustrating because Gaga normally exercised extraordinary control over the visual worlds accompanying her music.

She has continued performing the song and has even teased a continuation of its famous video, but popularity never erased her discomfort with the finished work. One of her most celebrated exercises in pop excess became the creation she found hardest to revisit.^[10]