10 songs artists apologised for making

‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ – Billy Joel

There’s always been an indelible charm every time a Billy Joel song comes on the radio. While he never claimed to be the greatest artist in the world by any stretch, the everyman mentality that he put in every one of his tracks was half the reason my people loved having him around, even if his tunes could verge towards corny quite readily. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of corn on the charts, though, but even Joel himself had his limits on what he thought was acceptable from his albums.

Although many people have seen a handful of Joel cuts anywhere between decent and forgettable, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ is the kind of song no one could forget if they tried. Despite Joel himself going way too fast for someone to know all of the words in one sitting, that hook is incredibly sticky, and while that’s normally a good thing for the pop charts, Joel felt that it had nothing to do with the kind of artist he wanted to be.

From the one-note verse melody to the sing-song lyrics on the chorus, Joel has said numerous times that he should have never subjected anyone to this tune, even equating the whole thing to nails on a chalkboard whenever he listens to it. For someone who has some of the most sophisticated melodies of all time, though, some of them were bound to be a bit too straightforward for his taste.

‘7 Minute Drill’ – J Cole

The rap game has been no stranger to making some of the most vicious songs that the world has ever seen. All is fair in love and bars, and whenever someone gets on a rapper’s bad side, they will normally say their piece in writing before they even think about making amends. Although J Cole did at least have a reason to be upset when Kendrick Lamar went after him on ‘Like That’, the fact that he responded so quickly showed that he was clearly out of his element.

Because first things first, J Cole was never a diss rapper. He had his beef with different people, but he was far more likely to squash everything out in private, so when he was tasked with going ask one of the biggest rappers in the world, nothing stuck. The idea of Lamar not having anything classic in years is irrefutably not true, and even before the song had room to breathe, Cole had already checked out.

During a festival the same weekend, Cole was already going back on his decision, calling it one of the worst songs that he had ever recorded in his life and saying that Lamar was one of the best rappers in the game today. Maybe his heart wasn’t in it in the first place, but considering all of the ugliness that came of Lamar eventually demolishing Drake during the rest of that rap beef, Cole may have felt that he was better off catching a stray line about him rather than being officially cooked.

‘Money for Nothing’ – Dire Straits

Dire Straits have always been the last band that anyone would think to say something controversial. As much as they could play their asses off, the band was always made up of the most painfully normal people in the music industry, but as long as Mark Knopfler could keep serving up guitar licks, that was all that mattered. But did he really have to go and make everything awkward the minute that he started badmouthing people on MTV on ‘Money for Nothing’?

The song itself is a brilliant time capsule to the days when the TV channel ruled the world, but Knopfler’s sharp critique of the channel was taken verbatim from a worker in a department store that he overheard bitching about the channel. The concept itself is clever, but when looking through every line, was there really any point in keeping in all of the homophobic slurs, especially since MTV was home to some major gay stars at the time like Frankie Goes to Hollywood?

Since the band understood how they were coming across, the lyrics were quickly changed on radio stations, with Knopfler complaining that he looked like a girl rather than throwing in some hateful speech. But looking at the way that some people feel the need to use that word to get their point across to this day, some people have still yet to learn any of the lessons that Dire Straits learned at the time.

‘Dancing in the Street’ – Van Halen

There was always a party atmosphere that followed Van Halen around everywhere they went. Although Eddie was more concerned with making new riffs that pushed their music forward, David Lee Roth had no problem playing the role of court jester making whatever song they made sound like one of the greatest times anyone could ever be a part of. So when they were going in new directions and getting even heavier, who had the good sense to tell them that ‘Dancing in the Street’ was a good idea?

While the original R&B classic is one of the finest dance songs of all time, the whole thing doesn’t scan properly as a Van Halen hit. There are moments when Eddie’s guitar sounds phenomenal, but since it was accompanied by the rest of Diver Down, the band were always going to have mixed feelings. The whole album was made at gunpoint for most of them, and none of them had fond memories of reliving sessions where they would rather be at home.

And since Eddie wrote an original interlude for the tune, he was extra furious when he found out that he wouldn’t be getting credit on any part of the tune since the rest of it was someone else’s work. Most people have to count their losses and move on after this kind of record, but the common consensus among the band was that ‘Dancing in the Street’ hurt them more than it helped them.

‘The Long and Winding Road’ – The Beatles

No one in The Beatles was exactly thrilled with each other by the time they were breaking up. There had been some creative disagreements, and it was completely natural for them to go in their own separate directions, but the idea of bringing in Allen Klein split them down in the middle and cast Paul McCartney as the villain who wanted to dismantle the group for a while. Even though they felt that had faced every setback, they had to deal with even more headaches once they were forced to release Let It Be.

It was understood that a lot of the songs on here were nothing but table scraps from their time working together, but Macca was livid when he found out what happened to ‘The Long and Winding Road’. The song itself is a great melancholy ballad from that time, but now that it had Phil Spector’s paws sprinkled throughout everything, it started to look like some schmaltzy bit of fluff rather than the earnest ballad that McCartney wanted it to be.

McCartney even managed to do everything in his power to leave the song the way it was, asking management to never pull something like that again and releasing Let It Be…Naked later in life to show people the version of the album he would have preferred people hear. Most people would have let it go thirty years after the fact, but when someone commits the injustice of taking your song out of the vaults and do what they want with it, that’s not exactly easy for anyone to let go of.

‘Supa Ugly’ – Jay-Z

The entire rap scene has never been kind when it comes to diss tracks. There have been many times where beef has been squashed and everyone could walk away afterwards, but given how harsh some allegations can get in songs, it’s extremely hard to look back on diss tracks fondly if they’re proven to be wrong. And while Jay-Z wasn’t exactly spreading lies, the entire situation between him and Nas went to a new level of low with ‘Supa Ugly’.

Although this rivalry had been going on for a few years by the time the song dropped, ‘Ether’ was the people’s choice for the best tune to come out of the beef. Nas had taken Jay-Z to task for every flaw in his persona, and while Jay-Z didn’t exactly back off of the issue, certain pieces of this tune were a bit uncalled for, including painting Nas as gay for his close relationship with Jadakiss and threatening to air dirty laundry that Nas didn’t want out in public.

For all of the macho posturing going on in this kind of tune, the end of the beef was actually fairly funny, since Jay-Z’s mom had to get into the equation and ask her son to apologise for what he did. There are many ways that people can back out of a rap beef after being demolished, but at the same time, someone’s parents getting involved is almost schoolyard levels of immature.

‘I Can See A Liar’ – Oasis

No one was expecting Oasis to come out of the gate swinging again in the early 2000s. It had become abundantly clear that they had lost the plot around the time of Be Here Now, and while the record wasn’t nearly the trainwreck that most people took it for, it managed to shake Noel Gallagher’s confidence as a songwriter enough to do a complete overhaul of his material. Many tunes were great on Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, but this was the first Oasis album that came with a warning from ‘The Chief’.

Since this was the start of a more democratic approach to the group, Noel relinquished duties for the first time by letting one of Liam’s songs get onto the tracklist, ‘Little James’. While his brother’s attempt is far from ‘Imagine’ levels of songwriting, Noel was openly dismissive of ‘I Can See A Liar’ before anyone had even heard it, saying that the music was fine but the lyrics were absolute garbage.

And judging by the rest of the album, he’s absolutely right. There is a good tune at the heart of the song, but there’s hardly any real substance there beyond the one line. Noel eventually admitted to including it to give the album some variety, but the medium pace might have served the album a bit better. After all, Oasis B-sides are the perfect cure for everything, so putting something like ‘Let’s All Make Believe’ in this track’s place could have done the trick to fix one kink in the armour.

‘Bip Bop’ – Paul McCartney

According to Paul McCartney himself, he never knew how to be in a band after The Beatles. He was convinced that the Fab Four would be around forever, and no matter how many times they fought, no one would have imagined that they would have gone their separate ways so quickly after Allen Klein became involved. It was back to square one for Macca once again, but building up the first incarnation of Wings should have been a lot smoother than what we ended up with on Wild Life.

Despite McCartney’s urge to get back to the rudiments of rock and roll, the album suffered from being way too rough around the edges, with ‘Bip Bop’ being the most egregious example. ‘Mumbo’ was already nothing to write home about considering its “lyrics” being adlibbed on the spot during a Little Richard-style jam, but McCartney sounds like he’s openly making fun of himself at this point, almost like the nursery rhyme lyrics he had from back in the day were taken seriously this time around.

Even though Wings didn’t have a lot to draw on for their live sets when they first began, it didn’t take McCartney long to retire the tune from the setlist and say that he never wanted to play it again. John Lennon may have helped disassemble his psyche on Plastic Ono Band, but McCartney’s way of shedding his skin should have meant something with at least a little more substance than this.

‘Misery Business’ – Paramore

Every single person coming up during the rise of pop-punk and emo music remembers the importance of angst. As much as people loved the idea of singing along to the catchy chorus, what was going on in the background was equally as important, especially when the lyrics had the capacity to break anyone’s heart. Although Paramore fit in well among the pop-punk crowd on Riot!, even they had to admit when some of that teenage rebelliousness got the better of them.

This is a shame, considering ‘Misery Business’ is one of the greatest songs in their songbook. The interplay between the guitars is fantastic, and it has the catchiest chorus they would ever write, but there are a few lines that are a bit more divisive for fans, including Hayley Williams calling her ex’s new flame nothing more than a whore. As the chorus might imply, it may have felt good to get that energy out, but when singing it past the age of 23, it starts to get a little bit more uncomfortable.

Although the band have broken the tune out for special occasions, Williams has said that she’s far more comfortable carving out her own path without the song, even retiring it from live performances because of the subject matter. It might not make much sense to have a band abandon their seminal song, but it’s also a sign of artistic growth that someone can acknowledge what they did in the past and move on.

‘Atom Heart Mother’ – Pink Floyd

The entire journey Pink Floyd took between Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Dark Side of the Moon is staggering. There was no way that they were going to be a mock version of themselves without Syd Barrett in the mix any more, but looking through the rest of their catalogue, there was a lot of trial and error before they managed to hit on the kind of music that they excelled in. And while ‘Echoes’ did perfect their ability to write longer pieces, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ was nothing but a disaster as far as the band were concerned.

Outside of having a brass section that was inexperienced at recording, the entire 20-minute piece was an absolute slog for them to work on, with Nick Mason and Roger Waters having to play each of their parts in one take so that they could have a firm foundation for everyone to work with. In hindsight, neither Waters nor David Gilmour could stand playing the tune, saying that they would rather play anything else if they were paid millions of dollars for it to meet the stage again.

While the song is far from the cleanest recording the band ever made and has more than a few blemishes, it does serve as a perfect case study of how to paint a picture of the band’s creative growth. They had a lot of work to do before getting to Dark Side of the Moon, but considering they had been working on Ummagumma before this, this piece was at least a step in the right direction.