Greatest Hates: Nine popstars who can't stand their big hits

With the revelation this week by legendary songwriter Diane Warren that Cher had to held down by her leg to be persuaded to record If I Could Turn Back Time, we look at other massive tunes that are loved by us, but aren’t quite so popular with the stars who made them famous.

Cher

Songwriter Diane Warren has been behind some of the biggest hits in the world for acts like Celine Dion, Sugababes, Whitney Houston and, of course, Cher. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Diane said Cher hated If I Could Turn Back Time and didn’t want to record it, “but I held her leg down during a session and said, 'You have to record it!’” Cher’s response was a bit sweary, but she agreed and once it was done, says Diane, "She gave me this look like, 'You were right.' "

And Diane was right. If I Could Turn Back Time was a huge hit worldwide, reaching Number 6 in the UK in 1989, giving Cher her fifth solo Top 10 hit. Cher herself has said she wasn’t that keen on the follow-up single Just Like Jesse James either. She was pretty wrong about that too – it reached Number 11 in 1990.

Lady Gaga

“Hello, hello baby, you called. I can’t hear a thing” might be one of the best opening lines of a song ever, but for Lady Gaga, Telephone is definitely one song she'd love to hang up on. She’s said in interviews that while she loved working with Beyoncé, the video for Telephone was too crammed with ideas and overcomplicated and that she wasn’t in a good place when she wrote and recorded the song.

Telephone was recorded by Britney Spears but never made it onto an album, so Gaga took it back, and while she may not be very fond of it, it was the right move. Telephone hit Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart in early 2010, shifting over 700,000 copies, and neither Gaga nor Bey have had a chart-topping single since.

Madonna

Her Madgesty has made no secret of the fact that much of her early material makes her cringe. She hasn’t performed True Blue since the ‘80s as it was written with first husband Sean Penn in mind and she has said she feels silly performing tracks like Sorry (Number 1 in 2006) and Into The Groove (her first Number 1 and bestselling single in the UK). And when she’s not slating big hits Holiday (charted three times, but highest was Number 2 in 1985), and American Pie (a Number 1 in 2000), her special loathing is usually reserved for Like A Virgin.

Like A Virgin is one of Madonna’s 59 Top 10 singles in the UK, and was the first of 35 consecutive Top 10 hits for the star from 1984 to 1994. In interviews, she claimed she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to sing it again. ”I just can’t,” she told New York radio station Z100 in 2009, “unless somebody paid me like $30 million or something.” Luckily, for us, Madonna changes her mind almost as often as she changes her basques, and she did indeed perform Like A Virgin again, albeit a slowed-down version, every night on her 2012 MDNA tour.

Here she is totally rocking it on her 2006 Confessions Tour. Come on, Madge, you know you love it as much as we do, really!

Take That

The fivesome that became a foursome and then a fivesome again have a long chart history, stretching back to their very first Top 40 hit Promises in 1991. The band have had 25 Top 40 hits, including 11 Number 1s, but there’s one song you won’t find on their setlist any time soon – their third Top 40 hit I Found Heaven from 1992. Speaking in his autobiography, frontman and former X Factor judge Gary Barlow says: “I still hate it to this day. In fact, we all hate it and absolutely refuse to perform it on stage. It is, by a huge margin, the worst song of Take That's and my career.”

The track was the first Take That hit to feature Robbie Williams on lead vocals, but even the Robmeister doesn’t feel much love for it, claiming a couple of years ago that he’d actually walked out halfway through recording it following a fall-out with the producer. I Found Heaven, which is quite a nice tune really when you think about it, reached Number 15 and would be the last Take That single to miss the Top 10 until I’d Wait For Life 15 years later.

Here they are performing it on Top Of The Pops. You can kind of tell they'd rather be putting the bins out, can't you?

Sugababes

With four line-ups and six different members at one time or another, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear there’d been some conflict over on Team Sugababes. But the girls’ ire wasn’t just for each other – some of their hits fall into the firing line, too. Mutya, who left the band in 2005, considers Red Dress to be a wardrobe malfunction. “Do you know what?” Mutya told OfficialCharts.com last year, “I can’t lie, I hated it with a passion.”

And to make matters worse, Red Dress was the first single Sugababes released after Mutya quit, her vocals re-recorded by newcomer Amelle Berrabah. It turned out to be a good move for Sugababes 3.0 – Red Dress peaked at Number 4 to be the band’s 11th Top 10 hit.

Keisha, who was the last original Sugababe to depart in 2009, has a big beef with the final hit she had with the group. “Get Sexy shouldn’t have happened,” Keisha told OfficialCharts.com last year.

“It was amazing working with Bruno [Mars, who co-wrote the song] but… I just didn’t feel like that was a representation of who we were as a band but we didn’t, at that point, have a lot of say.” Get Sexy charted at Number 2, just as Keisha was departing the band, selling over 190,000 copies.

Girls Aloud

With 22 Top 40 hits, including 20 consecutive Top 10s, you’d think the dear departed Girls Aloud would be very pleased with their back catalogue. Not so. At a Popjustice £20 Music Prize event, bandmember Nicola Roberts said she had so little love for 2008 hit The Loving Kind, it might actually be the worst song of the year! Never mind that it was a Top 10 hit and sold over 160,000 copies!

At the press conference for their reunion greatest hits album and tour in late 2012, all five of the girls cringed when a fan said his favourite tune was their Number 5 hit from 2007, Sexy! No No No. But we still love it.

Oasis

If asked to name Oasis’s most famous song, you’d probably go for Wonderwall, right? Yeah, us too. Trouble is, both Liam and Noel Gallagher can’t stand it. The legend goes Noel was originally set to sing the tune, written about his first wife, but Liam insisted and won that particular battle. He came to regret it, though, as he got tired of singing it and, worst of all, having the crowd sing it back to him. Noel was equally dismissive of the track, especially when American fans called him “Mr Wonderwall”.

But Wonderwall is the one the public want to hear, and everyone was pleasantly surprised when Liam Gallagher appeared at the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony to sing the song. Big bro Noel wasn’t impressed – at a gig a couple of days later, he sang his own version, dedicating it to “Stratford’s finest tribute band”. Miaow. Whatever the boys’ feelings, the record-buying public are never wrong. Wonderwall was a Number 2 hit, and has sold over 1.2 million copies.

Miley Cyrus

It comes as no surprise that, after a reinvention as swift and successful as hers, Miley Cyrus would look upon her early material less favourably. She disowned her 2009 hit Party In The USA pretty quickly, saying in an interview: “My 13-year-old self would have beaten up my 17-year-old self because she would be like, 'You're a sellout!'”

Party In The USA reached Number 11 and sold over 280,000 copies. Her first Number 1 We Can’t Stop shifted over 520,000 copies, so we suppose Miley’s loyalty lies with her big sellers.

Saturdays

Surely the extra-smiley, super-naughty Saturdays would love each and every one of their 17 Top 40 hits, right?But when asked which Sats track they liked the least, the girls unanimously voted debut hit If This Is Love top of the heap.

Despite launching their career in 2008, reaching Number 8, and selling over 110,000 copies in the process, the Saturdays are feeling zero warmth for the Yazoo-sampling track, pulling a face whenever it’s mentioned. If This Is Love? It certainly ain't.

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