Music stars who hated their biggest hits

Did you know that the late Tina Turner never liked this song? Her manager, Roger Davies, encouraged her to record it anyway. 'What's Love Got to Do with It' would be at the top of the Billboard charts for weeks and help her return in 1984 as a solo artist after she'd left Ike years earlier.

In a catalog of dozens or hundreds of songs, it makes sense that an artist doesn't like all of them equally. But they rarely admit it in public. And it's even rarer if the song in question is a hit.

Let's have a look at the singers who don't like some of their most famous songs.

The Queen of Pop ended up hating what is perhaps her most famous song. In 1984 it was a hit and in 2008 Madonna confessed to People that she wasn't sure she wanted to sing it again.

One of U2's most iconic songs is one that Bono hates. The reason? As he confessed to WENN, he finds the text "rather silly".

Despite it being one of their most successful songs, Slash has always distanced himself from 'Sweet Child O' Mine'. He considered it a "ballad", very far removed from the band's original sound. Unfortunately for him, it is one of the most recognizable songs of the group.

Cher's return to disco was one of the best revivals in history. Her 'Believe' immediately became an anthem, but not all that glitters is gold. Besides hating the Autotune that was applied to her voice, Cher didn't like the song's entire sound and in fact, rejects almost all of her repertoire from that era.

Queen guitarist Brian May disagreed with the lyrics of the song because it glorified Freddie Mercury's hedonistic lifestyle, which seemed "dangerous", he told Smooth Radio. In addition, after the singer's death, Brian May revealed that it was very difficult to play a song as energetic and fun as 'Don't stop me now'.

According to GQ magazine, Frank Sinatra loathed this song, especially after having to play it night after night. "And of course, the time comes now for the torturous moment—not for you, but for me," he told one audience in 1979. "I hate this song. I HATE THIS SONG! I got it up to here [with] this god-d song!" he told another.

Lorde burst onto the music scene in 2013 with a powerful track titled 'Royals' which made her an instant star. The problem is that for Lorde the song was a "disaster".
"The melodies aren't good or fresh," she told Fuse TV. The situation worsened when the artist started seeing covers of her song made by other singers, which she considered superior to her original.

A genius like John Lennon had no problem saying what he thought, and this was the case with 'Let It Be'. A most symbolic song for his three bandmates, it seemed to him very far removed from the usual Beatles sound. "I don't know what they were thinking when they wrote it."

That Liam Gallagher, a hater by profession, hates one of his own songs would not be news in itself. But if the song is 'Wonderwall' (1995), the anthem of a generation and for many the most important song in the history of Brit Pop, things change. While unveiling 'Dig Out Your Soul' in 2008, the singer said the best thing about the album was "I can't F stand that F song."

It's an important song in history in terms of social and altruistic significance, and it brought together the brightest stars of the world music scene in 1985. Yet Bob Geldof called it "one of the worst songs ever" in an interview with the Daily Mail.

Since 1969, this single is an icon in rock music. However, its creator, Pete Townshend, has called it "The most clumsy piece of writing I've ever done". Yet, he can't avoid it. They even opened with it in their Super Bowl show in 2010.

In 2005, an unknown James Blunt took the world by storm with a heartbreaking ballad. The success was such that it was played over and over again, on radios all over the world, to the point of tiring millions of people. The singer himself hated his great success because he was labeled a "romantic" author, which he says he is not.

This 1986 hit is one of those songs that can liven up any party. Yet, its creators apparently hate it. The group created this song as a parody of the so-called "bro culture" and the people who are part of it. However, it ended up becoming an anthem for the exact kind of people it intended to mock. The song repulsed them so much that on a compilation album, they added a note describing it as "junk".

For many, 'Creep' is one of the best songs ever. For co-creator Thom Yorke it was "frustrating, being judged on just that song when we felt we needed to move on," as he told Rolling Stone. In fact, the band stopped playing it live for a long time.

As life would have it, even the legendary TLC hated their song 'Creep'. In their case, they were against the meaning of the lyrics: applying "an eye for an eye" to someone's infidelity by paying for it with another. They preferred to move on.

“The last time I have to sing ‘Crocodile Rock’ I will probably throw a party. It was written as a kind of a joke, like a pastiche," Sir Elton John said on the Denney Talks podcast about this hit song. It was really like a joke on old-time rock, but his fans love it so he keeps playing it.

And then there's the single that launched Katy Perry into the Olympus of celebrities in 2008: 'I Kissed a Girl'. Over the following decade, times changed and the singer acknowledges that the lyrics of the song do not help to overcome stereotypes about sexuality.

Along with 'Losing My Religion,' REM's most significant song, 'Shiny Happy People' was rejected out of hand by its singer, Michael Stipe. "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'," he confessed to the BBC in 2016.

Britney Spears hates her famous hit 'Sometimes'. This was revealed by a treacherous open microphone during her famous Onyx Hotel Tour. Spears quietly said: "I never liked that song". She didn't mean for everyone to hear it.

In 2005, Kanye West wasn't as prominent a rapper as he is now, but 'Gold Digger' elevated him to star status. It also won him a few Grammys. Despite this, in 2013 he admitted to BBC Radio that "I never really liked that song, but I always knew I would get paid for doing that song." Another honest artist.

Not everyone knows, but the 'This is Us' star was a singer as a teenager, and her worldwide hit was 'Candy' in 1999. Not only did the artist reject the song's text in an interview with Howard Stern, claiming she "never understood the lyrics", but in 2006 she went as far as to reject her first two albums altogether. "If I had the money, I would give a refund to everyone who bought my first two albums," she said. Brutal honesty.

Pharrell shared a hit with Robin Thicke, in a song whose video also launched a barely dressed Emily Ratajkowski to stardom. The controversy was not long in coming and many women criticized Pharrell for the message contained in the lyrics of the song. So he took note and has been much more careful about what he says ever since.

It was 2009, and Miley Cyrus wanted to fly off and leave the Disney Girl label behind. This single opened the doors to the world for her, but she didn't like it. Two years later, at a party in a Chicago club, she asked the DJ to play any of her songs except 'Party in the USA,' according to PageSix at the time.

The success that Lady Gaga shared with Beyoncé took the world by storm in 2010. Sadly, Gaga herself wasn't going through one of her best moments emotionally and, of course, over time she ended up associating 'Telephone' with that bad time. That's why she wants nothing to do with that hit.

One of Bruno Mars' many hits came in 2011 and, what's more, with a very stylish video. But the song didn't quite convince him, as he confessed on Australian radio. "It turned out to be crap. I was spending six hours on a song that just wasn't going anywhere."

A curious case is that of Iggy Azalea. She has confessed that she hates many of her songs (without naming any in particular). However, she has no choice but to continue singing them for her fans. Professionalism first.

At one point in the song, The Boss utters the word "deuce", which sounds very similar to a 'dirty' word. Obviously, the fans of the late 70s opted for the more rogue version, and this did not please the singer.

"I was so young. I wanted a hit," Selena Gomez confessed to Popcrush in 2016. Three years earlier, that hit arrived with 'Come & Get It', her first single to reach the Billboard Top 10.
The problem? "It’s not my song. To me, it sounds like a Rihanna reject." And that's exactly what it was.

This Sam Smith hit went straight to #1, but the singer didn't like it. He wanted something more melodic and elegant, but the producer pushed him to record a more danceable song.

Luckily for the Canadian singer, he has plenty of hits, so he can afford to hate one. Specifically, as he stated in an interview with the Bert Show, he never liked 'Beauty and a Beat' from 2016.

Nowadays, Ariana Grande controls the entire process of her music production. It wasn't like that in 2011 when her first single came out. "It was geared towards kids and felt so inauthentic and fake," she confessed to Rolling Stone in 2014. Indeed, she recalled that the recording of the song "was the worst moment of my life".