History Main / RarelyPerformedSong

* Supergrass' big hit "Alright" is barely performed in recent band reunions. Although Gaz Coombes seems to still be fond of the song, he states that it doesn't reflect them nowadays since they're not young anymore -- he's joked that if they ''did'' play it live, it would have to be a SofterAndSlowerCover with the lyrics rewritten in the past tense ("We were young, we ran green" etc).

* Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}}: While [[Music/StickyFingers "Brown Sugar"]] was the band's second most popular live track for years, they removed it from their setlists in 2019 due to renewed scrutiny towards its lyrics, which lasciviously depict an affair between an enslaved Black woman and her white master.

* Stabbing Westward have rarely played the title track to their album ''Ungod'' since its release in 1994 - guitarist Stuart Zechman [[SelfPlagiarism used the same chorus riff]] for "Hey Man Nice Shot" by {{Music/Filter}}, and the latter became a hit single in 1995. The song was attempted a few more times in 1998, then seemed to be retired again.

* Stabbing Westward have rarely played the title track to their album ''Ungod'' since its release in 1994 - guitarist Stuart Zechman [[SelfPlagiarism used the same chorus riff]] for "Hey Man Nice Shot" by {{Music/Filter}}, and the latter became a hit single in 1995. The song was attempted a few more times in 1998, then seemed to be retired again.

** [[Music/YellowMagicOrchestraAlbum "Mad Pierrot"]] was taken out of the band's setlist following the band's earliest performances in 1978, due to the song's fast pace and dense arrangement making it difficult to consistently replicate.

** While ''Music/{{Technique}}'' is a fan-favorite album, the band dropped its songs from their setlist after their 1994-1998 hiatus. "Vanishing Point" briefly reappeared in 2017, but that was it.

* Music/{{Tool}}: "Ticks & Leeches" from ''Lateralus'' features a ''lot'' of screaming, and its recording actually wrecked vocalist Maynard's voice for a couple of weeks. As a result, they very rarely play it live, and on the occasions that it is played, heavy electronic effects are added over Maynard's voice so he can sing it relatively normally but maintain its intensity.

* Music/SteeleyeSpan no longer performs the old English folk song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qXkBoR80k Little Sir Hugh]]," despite the fact it is thought of as one of their best. It was pointed out to them that although the song in its various forms has been around for at least six centuries, it isn't ''just'' a medieval ditty about cruel child murder. The ballad, about a woman dressed in green who slaughters a little boy to collect his blood in a bucket, is about "blood libel", an antisemitic conspiracy theory accusing Jews of kidnapping children for HumanSacrifice, which was used to justify the expulsion of England's Jewish population in the late 1100s. The band accepted the ballad is extremely antisemitic and dropped it from their performances.
* Supergrass' big hit "Alright" is barely performed in recent band reunions. Although Gaz Coombes seems to still be fond of the song, he states that it doesn't reflect them nowadays since they're not young anymore - he's joked that if they ''did'' play it live, it would have to be a SofterAndSlowerCover with the lyrics rewritten in the past tense ("We were young, we ran green" etc).

* Supergrass' big hit "Alright" is barely performed in recent band reunions. Although Gaz Coombes seems to still be fond of the song, he states that it doesn't reflect them nowadays since they're not young anymore.

** Following the release of the 2019 documentary ''Leaving Neverland'', which detailed new child sexual abuse allegations against Music/MichaelJackson, Al opted to remove [[Music/WeirdAlYankovicIn3D "Eat It"]], [[Music/EvenWorse "Fat"]], and "Snack All Night" from his setlists, as they were parodies of some of Jackson's biggest hits ("Music/BeatIt", "Music/{{Bad}}", and [[Music/{{Dangerous}} "Black or White"]], respectively). "Eat It" had not been performed live in full since 1987, appearing only to close out a medley of Yankovic's own hits in concert.

** Because ''Music/{{Jazz|1978}}'' underperformed by the band's standards, "Don't Stop Me Now" was permanently removed from their setlists in TheEighties, having only been played live in 1979.

** Following the release of the 2019 documentary ''Leaving Neverland'', which detailed new child sexual abuse allegations against Music/MichaelJackson, Al opted to remove [[Music/WeirdAlYankovicIn3D "Eat It"]], [[Music/EvenWorse "Fat"]], and "Snack All Night" from his setlists, as they were parodies of some of Jackson's biggest hits ("Music/BeatIt", "Music/{{Bad}}", and [[Music/{{Dangerous}} "Black or White"]], respectively).

* Music/{{Megadeth}} frontman Dave Mustaine retired "The Conjuring" in 2001 after becoming a Christian, due to its lyrics depicting black magic rituals. Mustaine wouldn't bring the song back into the band's setlist until 2018.

** In spite of the popularity of the self-titled ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'' theme, Music/ShirleyBassey seldom performed the song publicly, citing how it didn't feel like her own song, which was initially offered to both Johnny Mathis and Music/FrankSinatra.

* Music/SteeleyeSpan no longer performs the old English folk song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qXkBoR80k Little Sir Hugh]]," despite the fact it is thought of as one of their best. It was pointed out to them that although the song in its various forms has been around for at least six centuries, it isn't ''just'' a medieval ditty about cruel child murder. The ballad, about a woman dressed in green who slaughters a little boy to collect his blood in a bucket, is about "blood libel", the invented reason for expelling all Jews from England in the late 1100s. The band accepted the ballad is extremely antisemitic and dropped it from their performances.

* Music/{{Muse}} have all but abandoned their debut album ''Showbiz'' from 2014 onward after a slow decline in performances beginning in 2005. It is their only album to have no songs performed from it consistently at live shows, with the album's top 20 hit singles "Sunburn" and "Muscle Museum" only being performed twice and five times respectively in the last 10 years, the band's debut single "Uno" being performed a mere five times since 2003, and the album's fan-favorite TitleTrack being performed on extremely rare occasions from 2017 to 2019 due to high fan demand. A combination of the album's obscurity outside of Europe, the deeply personal and emotional lyrics, and all of the songs on the album becoming increasingly difficult for frontman Matt Bellamy to sing is believed to have led to the album's disappearance from the band's concerts.

* While Music/KingCrimsons's [[Music/InTheCourtOfTheCrimsonKing "21st Century Schizoid Man"]] has been a staple of the band's live performances throughout most of their history, it was conspicuously left out of their setlists during the 1980s, in part due to Music/RobertFripp's desire to avoid anchoring the group to the past (which itself was a byproduct of his discontent with what he saw as genre-wide artistic stagnation during the twilight of ProgressiveRock's heyday in the '70s). "The King Crimson Barber Shop", a joke song included as a bonus track on the 2001 remaster of ''Music/ThreeOfAPerfectPair'', riffs on this with the lines "We don't do '21st Century Schizoid Man', but we're the King Crimson band."

** [[https://forum.maidenfans.com/threads/iron-maiden-songs-%E2%80%93-a-rough-overview-of-their-%E2%80%9Clive-history%E2%80%9D.16270/ Many of their songs were never played live]] (the only albums that had all tracks performed at some point were [[Music/IronMaidenAlbum their self-titled debut]] and ''A Matter of Life and Death''), and quite a few only in a few concerts. One that fans particularly lament that has never entered a setlist is "Alexander the Great", something that cover band The Iron Maidens [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVvZtCfQbe8 tries to alleviate]].

* Music/PeterGabriel dropped all of his past material with Music/{{Genesis|Band}} from his setlists after 1978, owed to a combination of him wanting to more thoroughly separate himself from his old band and the fact that his solo output was moving in a vastly different direction. The only time he played any of Genesis' songs again was as part of a one-off reunion concert at the 1982 WOMAD festival.

** Due to lingering bad memories of its TroubledProduction and their dissatisfaction with how it turned out, most of the material on ''Music/{{Republic}}'' was dropped from live performances following the conclusion of its supporting tour, save for occasional appearances of "Regret".

* Music/TheB52s stopped playing "Song For A Future Generation" after the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson. Wilson had a spoken word section in the song, and the band felt it wasn't right to perform it without him.

* Subverted in the case of Great White; after The Station nightclub fire in 2003 that killed 100 people, they refused to play the song they were performing when the fire broke out, "Desert Moon". However, the band resumed playing the song in 2009.

* Zig-zagged with Music/PaulMcCartney. During the early post-Beatles years, he refused to play any Beatles songs. Eventually he relaxed that policy but still played only a few Beatles songs (mainly the songs that he wrote without the help of Lennon). Current setlists usually feature an even mixture of his work with The Beatles and his solo work. Also, he still rarely plays songs such as "Coming Up", "Every Night" and "Here Today".
* Music/{{Megadeth}} frontman Dave Mustaine retired "The Conjuring" in 2001 after becoming a Christian, due to its lyrics depicting black magic rituals. Later subverted when Mustaine brought the song back into the band's setlist in 2018.

* When Music/TupacShakur mocked Mobb Deep member Prodigy for having sickle cell disease on "Hit 'Em Up", the group released the diss single "Drop a Gem On 'Em" in response. A little less than three weeks after its release, Shakur was murdered in a drive-by shooting, and Mobb Deep [[NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead quickly pulled the single from circulation and airplay]] out of respect for Shakur and his family, but still included it on ''Hell on Earth''.

** After switching vocalist from Adrian Fitipales to Marcus Bridge, tunes from ''Discovery'' and ''Singularity'' started appearing less and less in live sets. Main reason is Adrian and Marcus having different vocal styles and both albums being considered EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. That said “Quantum Flux” is a live staple, and occasionally “Dispossesion” will be played in headline sets. Also saying that, both songs have been slowly disappearing from shows as of 2023.

* Since 2019, Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} have taken "Brown Sugar" out of their setlists whenever they perform live on stage, due to controversy over the song's racist and misogynist lyrics. It's overall {{averted}} though, as it's still the band's second most popular live track considering the overall statistics.

A SubTrope of CreatorBacklash. See also OldShame, BlackSheepHit, ScrewedByTheLawyers, DistancedFromCurrentEvents, HarsherInHindsight, HitlessHitAlbum, and NoHitWonder. Also compare CanonDiscontinuity. Please do not confuse this with AlbumFiller, which regards songs not usually meant to be played live or released as a single.

* Music/GreenDay has never performed "Panic Song" live. When a fan inquired about this, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong [[https://www.hauraki.co.nz/music/music-news/billie-joe-armstrong-reveals-the-green-day-song-that-is-too-hard-to-play-live/ stated]] that it was because the song is difficult to play live.