From forced performances to hit singles that became creative nightmares - we're counting down the artists who had to sing tracks they secretly loathed! These iconic vocalists put on brave faces despite their true feelings about songs that defined their careers. Which reluctant hit surprised you most?
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we'll be discussing 10 instances where vocalists performed songs of which they weren't exactly fond.
00:12This could have been due to other obligation, responsibility, or some other outside influence that forced the singer's hands.
00:18Tom Petty, Zombie Zoo
00:34The creative process behind an album can be involved or intimate. It all depends upon the artist.
00:39There were admittedly a lot of hands within the pod of Tom Petty's debut.
00:43From members of the Heartbreakers to ELO's Jeff Lynne, Gene Clark of the Birds, and Roy Orbison.
00:48Zombie Zoo is a song that Petty famously disliked, however, to the point where he told Rolling Stone magazine in 2017,
00:54I do not understand how that got on the record.
01:04The song was co-written by Petty, alongside Lynne, and featured backing vocals from Orbison.
01:09Did peer pressure have anything to do with that decision to record Zombie Zoo?
01:12It's unclear, but Petty further asserted in that same interview how he'd thrown away far better.
01:24Kurt Cobain, Smells Like Teen Spirit
01:26A big time hit can sometimes also serve as a proverbial albatross around a band's collective neck.
01:40There's this pressure that acts as an anchor to that hit, requiring artists to play these songs night after night, regardless of their moods or motives.
01:47Kurt Cobain seemed to be feeling a similar amount of pressure during a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, where he admitted,
01:53I can't pretend to have a good time playing it.
02:03Songwriters often wax and wane when it comes to how much they appreciate their hits.
02:07But it speaks volumes that interviewer of the piece, David Frick, mentions how Nirvana notably admitted Smells Like Teen Spirit on this night.
02:14Trissi Hind, Brass in Pocket
02:21Hindsight is 20-20, and a musical artist would probably rather have a hit than not have one, right?
02:35Chrissi Hind was notably quoted by her producer right around the time prior to the release of Brass in Pocket, saying something about that song going out over her dead body.
02:51Of course, Brass in Pocket is today seen as the Pretender's biggest hit, and most defining tune.
02:56But Hind's feelings at the time were anything but positive.
02:59She was extremely critical about her vocal performance, as well as the overall approach to the song.
03:03Hind naturally feels differently today, since Brass in Pocket has since top charts around the world.
03:16Michael Stipe, Shiny Happy People
03:27Hey, how do you feel when you glance at an old yearbook, or scroll all the way to the beginning of your Facebook profile?
03:32Like, all the way back. Pretty embarrassed, right?
03:35Musical acts often have their own creative skeletons in the closet.
03:38Albums or songs that they'd either record differently, or not at all.
03:42Michael Stipe definitely seems to have expressed complicated emotions concerning R.E.M.'s smash hit, Shiny Happy People.
03:48Stipe's declaration of the song being bubblegum may not be a bad thing for those of us that grew up with such sounds from the 60s or 70s.
04:00That said, Stipe's desire for R.E.M. to be taken seriously likely had a lot to do with his decision to distance the band creatively from this tune.
04:07The marketing behind a lot of 1980s hair metal was very simple. Release a big sounding anthem, follow it up with a power ballad, rinse and repeat.
04:26Janie Lane from Warren always seemed to aspire to loftier heights, however, as evidenced by the gritty and heavy sounding single, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
04:38This was supposed to be the title of Warren's second album, but their label, Columbia, had different ideas.
04:52They demand another song, Janie wrote Cherry Pie in about 15 minutes, and voila!
05:01A new album title, a new lead single, and an entirely new advertising direction focusing on fruit and innuendo.
05:07Lane's songwriting frankly deserved better, and it wouldn't be until Warren's third album, Doggy Dog, where Janie's more imaginative ideas were finally recorded.
05:23Ann Wilson, All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You.
05:26It isn't exactly a cardinal sin for a band to employ outside songwriters.
05:38Hart's 1980s comeback actually hinged upon these sorts of collaborations, but their Brigade LP from 1990 featured a laundry list of co-conspirators.
05:46One of these personnel members was Robert John Mutt Lang, who famously steered the good ship Def Leppard to success during the prior decade.
06:01Lang's contribution to Brigade, titled All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You, was a song that Hart's Ann Wilson decidedly disliked from Jump Street.
06:08This didn't stop it from being released as a successful single, however, and fans seemed to like the tune.
06:13Wilson never stopped hating it, however, even telling Far Out magazine so as recently as March 2025.
06:18Frank Sinatra, Strangers in the Night.
06:19Frank Sinatra, Strangers in the Night.
06:25The chairman of the board never shied away from giving his public what they wanted, even if what they wanted happened to be a song he hated.
06:41Strangers in the Night is, both then and today, seen as a definitive Sinatra tune, one that's indelibly linked with the crooner's style.
06:57Yet, both him and Rat Pack compadre Sammy Davis Jr. have a history of forcing their way through performances of songs they'd rather not sing.
07:04The latter was reportedly never too into his hit, The Candyman, while Sinatra never truly got used to Strangers in the Night's constant appearance in his set lists.
07:20Liam Gallagher, Wonderwall.
07:27Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
07:29We're not exactly sure if Liam Gallagher ever doubled down on that famous meme and introduced Oasis' hit song in this manner, but we do know that the singer apparently hates his most famous hit.
07:47Gallagher has routinely mentioned in articles and interviews about how he hated Wonderwall when he first heard it, and became even more distressed after it smashed records across the pond.
07:55Today, it's an oasis song that everybody knows, and almost anyone can play, but that doesn't mean that Liam is necessarily happy about singing it.
08:02You're my Wonderwall.
08:11Tom York, Creep.
08:13MTV's Buzzbin were video clips that the network often pushed hard in rotation due to their status as hot, creative, or up-and-coming.
08:19But I'm a creep.
08:27Creep from Radiohead was one of these videos, and this buzz clip earned the forward-thinking British rockers an early hit.
08:32Yet, the band's singer, Tom York, notoriously pushed back against this success, and even stopped singing Creep at gigs for a while in order to further distance Radiohead from this tune.
08:42The band would eventually embrace more avant-garde pastures, to the point where Creep doesn't even sound like it's from the same band.
08:55And, at least in the mind of Tom York, this is probably true.
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09:19Robert Plant, Stairway to Heaven
09:31We've had a little bit of fun with this video, but we admit that this concept of singers being forcibly held hostage to singing a song feels a bit beyond the pale.
09:38That's why it's so cool ending this clip with the story of Robert Plant performing Stairway to Heaven live for the first time in 16 years.
09:45The Led Zeppelin man always maintained a safe distance from this legendary rock song, last performing it in 2007 at a tribute concert for Atlanta Records founder Ahmet Erdogan.
10:01That show saw Zeppelin reforming with John Bonham's son Jason behind the kit.
10:05But this 2023 performance was for a good cause, a cancer awareness trust benefit organized by Duran Duran's Andy Taylor.
10:12They say you have your entire life to write your first record, but only months to compose a follow up.
10:24Can you think of any early rock hits that felt worlds away from a band's future career? Let us know in the comments.
10:29We'll still rain and yeha, darkness have come yeah.
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