Line #87 Main/RarelyPerformedSong


1	Everyone loves a good song by a musical artist or group, regardless of if it's considered their biggest hit or even a hit at all. Unfortunately, there are occasions where said good/popular song is almost never heard again in concert, on television, on the radio, or otherwise.
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3	This can occur for a variety of reasons. It's possible that the song is an OldShame or [[CreatorBacklash can be hated by the musician(s) themselves, in spite of its popularity]]. Another reason could be that the song is too difficult to perform live due to the changes to the artist's voice in the time between when it was first released and now, and them fearing of it [[VocalRangeExceeded not being performed to the best of their abilities]] or the complexity/legality of the song (certain instruments are required, they could be sued for playing it, etc.) deters them from playing it again. Another popular explanation is that the song is one from an emotional standpoint (oftentimes, dedicated to a deceased loved one or its subject matter now being DistancedFromCurrentEvents) and is considered too intimate or painful to perform again. Sometimes though, their reasoning for not playing it again is either [[AmbiguousSituation unclear or unexplained]].
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5	A SubTrope of CreatorBacklash. This trope may result in KeepCirculatingTheTapes. 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.
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7	!!NOTE: {{Administrivia/Zero Content Example}}s are not allowed. Please explain or provide some background as to why a song you're going to add to the list is considered a Rarely Performed Song. Also, the examples have been alphabetized by artist for your convenience.
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9	!!Examples:
10	* Music/{{ACDC}} has not performed "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock & Roll)" live since original frontman Bon Scott's death in 1980, as the next frontman Brian Johnson considers it "Bon's Song" and wouldn't be right for him to sing it.
11	* Despite its strong critical praise and live-friendly sound, Music/{{Adele}} refused to perform "To Be Loved" past a sole pre-recorded video of her singing it in her living room. In an interview, she clarified that the song, which documents her attempts at explaining her divorce to her son, is so personal that "I can't even listen to it [...] I have to leave the room, I get really upset, I get really choked up."
12	* The German musician Alligatoah rarely live-performs songs from his early albums.[[note]] ATTNTAAT, STRWI and STRW II aren't nearly as well-known and from In Gottes Namen, STRW III and STRW IV, he usually only chooses the respective [[SignatureSong Signature Songs]]. [[/note]] From his 2013 album "Triebwerke" that caused a significant NewbieBoom, "Prostitution" and the "Münchhausen" trilogy are usually not played either due to their relative obscurity, while "Wunderschöne Frau" and "Erntedank" additionally have featured artists that he usually doesn't live-performs with.
13	* 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.
14	* Music/BarenakedLadies: For a while, the band didn't perform "If I Had a Million Dollars" live because fans would often throw boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese onstage during the line "We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinner". When the band began playing the song again, they put donation boxes for food shelters in the places they performed concerts at, and asked fans to put their Kraft boxes in there instead of throwing them at the band members.
15	* Music/TheBeachBoys have played almost nothing from ''Music/SummerInParadise'' live since it released, thanks to the album being a critical and commercial failure and a massive source of CreatorBacklash (even for Music/MikeLove, who scarcely mentions the album in his memoirs despite the project being his brainchild). The only ''Summer in Paradise'' track to appear in their setlists is the TitleTrack, which remains a concert staple thanks to its environmentalist themes.
16	* Music/BeastieBoys rarely perform "Fight For Your Right" live, as while the song was intended to be a satire of frat-boy and party-hard culture, it was misinterpreted as a celebration of such by its targets. Mike D [[https://hiphophero.com/why-beastie-boys-dropped-fight-for-your-right-from-live-show-sets/ later noted]]:
17	-->'''Mike D:''' There were tons of guys singing along to 'Fight for Your Right' who were oblivious to the fact it was a total goof on them.
18	* Music/PatBenatar has stated that she will no longer sing her hit "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" in deference to the victims of the families of the multiple 2022 mass shootings in the US.
19	--> ''I'm not singing it. I tell [fans], if you want to hear the song, go home and listen to it. [The title] is tongue-in-cheek, but you have to draw the line. I can't say those words out loud with a smile on my face, I just can't.''
20	* Music/Blink182: For a time, after 2009, the band retired "Adam's Song" from their concerts due to the death of their close friend [=DJ=] [=AM=], who succumbed to his drug addiction. Nine years later though, they brought the song back during their residency at Las Vegas, with bassist Mark Hoppus explaining that they saw it in a new light.
21	* Born of Osiris stopped playing anything off their breakthrough album, ''The Discovery,'' as of 2021. ''The Discovery'' was tracked by acclaimed guitarist Jason Richardson, [[HostilityOnTheSet who infamously got along poorly with the rest of Born of Osiris.]] They allegedly ripped off Richardson for his work on the album, and his personality clashed with the laidback and party-heavy Born of Osiris. The bad blood between Richardson and Born of Osiris, as well as the material being hard to play live, is likely why the band doesn't play anything off ''The Discovery'' anymore, including SignatureSong "Follow The Signs."
22	* Music/DavidBowie:
23	** All of Bowie's pre-''Music/SpaceOddity'' material disappeared from Bowie's setlists once his career took off in the early '70s, owed to a mix of its EarlyInstallmentWeirdness and his CreatorBacklash towards it. Bowie eventually incorporated "Can't Help Thinking About Me" into his setlist during the supporting tour for ''[[Music/HoursDavidBowieAlbum 'hours...']]'' in 1999 and featured "I Dig Everything" and "The London Boys" in the Mini Tour the following summer. This revisiting of his early material led to the making of the re-recordings album ''Toy'' in 2000 (though the album went unreleased until 2021).
24	** After the Glass Spider Tour in 1987, material from ''Music/{{Tonight}}'' mostly vanished from Bowie's setlists, while material from ''Music/NeverLetMeDown'' completely vanished, owed to Bowie's fierce CreatorBacklash towards both albums. The most representation ''Tonight'' got post-1987 consisted of "Blue Jean" reappearing during the Sound + Vision tour and both it and "Loving the Alien" appearing in the supporting tour for ''Music/{{Reality}}''.
25	** Bowie deliberately sought to invoke this with his 1990 Sound + Vision tour, done to promote Creator/{{Rykodisc}}'s remasters of his back-catalog. Not wanting to become a legacy act, the idea behind the tour was that he would perform all his greatest hits (plus the recent [[Music/KingCrimson Adrian Belew]] collaboration "Pretty Pink Rose") for one last run before permanently retiring them from his setlists. The plan mostly fell through during the supporting tour for ''Music/{{Outside}}'', where his unwillingness to play old songs drew staunch criticism and forced him to renege on his idea, but he still deprioritized them in favor of post-1990 material, and six tracks featured on the Sound + Vision tour [[https://bowiesongs.tumblr.com/post/29900916399/did-bowie-really-retire-his-oldies did indeed disappear]] from Bowie's setlists for good: [[Music/TheRiseAndFallOfZiggyStardustAndTheSpidersFromMars "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"]], "John, I'm Only Dancing", "Amsterdam", "Music/YoungAmericans", [[Music/StationToStation "TVC 15"]], and "Pretty Pink Rose". Additionally, the TitleTrack to ''Music/SpaceOddity'' would only be performed a handful of times after the tour.
26	* According to ''Series/PopUpVideo'', Boy George no longer performs his 1992 cover of Dave Barry's 1964 hit "The Crying Game" for the [[Film/TheCryingGame the soundtrack for the film of the same name]] due to the strain it causes to his voice.
27	* Music/CannibalCorpse played "Frantic Disembowelment" from ''The Wretched Spawn'' live exactly once before permanently retiring it from their setlists, as it's a ridiculously technical song that is physically painful to play, and, while the most well-known song from its album, is nowhere near enough of a fan favorite to justify slogging through it.
28	* Invoked by Music/AaronCarter, who told the audience at a live show of his that he would not perform some of his older hits, like "I Want Candy", even as some begged him to due to his wish to be taken as a "serious artist".
29	* Ever since the release of 2019's ''Death Atlas'', Music/CattleDecapitation has seldom performed anything from the albums before it, with 2009's ''The Harvest Floor'' being a particularly major pariah for them despite having numerous fan favorites. The case regarding ''The Harvest Floor'' is because most of its songs are technically difficult and often physically painful to play, and Dave [=McGraw=] in particular hates his drumming on the album, believing that he overplayed in a misguided attempt to prove himself as the then-new drummer.
30	* Music/EricClapton's 1992 GriefSong "Tears in Heaven" was written for his 4-year-old son Conor, who died after falling from an apartment window. Come 2004, however, Clapton has stopped performing the song, citing being able to cope with the loss and no longer needing it. He additionally no longer performs his 1998 song "My Father's Eyes", which was inspired by growing up never knowing his father, for similar reasons.
31	* Music/LeonardCohen performed almost nothing from ''Music/DeathOfALadiesMan'' live due to his CreatorBacklash towards the material and his poor memories of its turbulent making. The sole exception was "Memories", which was a staple of Cohen's 1979, 1980, and 1985 concert tours.
32	* Music/CountingCrows has a case with the ''original'' version of their 1993 BreakthroughHit, "Mr. Jones". The song, from their debut album, is about struggling musicians seeking fame and hit #2 on the US Billboard chart. Starting around 1999, following years of vocalist/songwriter Adam Duritz enduring mental health struggles and disillusionment with fame, the band began performing a more "subdued" acoustic version of the song live. Additionally, several of the lyrics were changed. "We all wanna be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that" became "We all wanna be big, big stars, but then we get ''second thoughts about'' that"; while "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as funky as you can be" became "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as ''fucked up'' as you can be." Thus, the original version of the song is now rarely performed.
33	* Music/DefLeppard only sporadically performed "Tonight" during their Adrenalize tour due to it being one of the last songs Steve Clark worked on before his tragic death, making it too painful to feature in regular set rotation at the time, though it was performed more often in subsequent tours.
34	* Music/DepecheMode refused to play [[Music/BlackCelebration "But Not Tonight"]] for decades due to substantial CreatorBacklash towards it, having hastily put it together in three hours for the ''Modern Girls'' soundtrack. The track wouldn't appear on their setlist until 2014, when Martin Gore put together an acoustic rendition for ''Delta Machine''[='s=] supporting tour.
35	* Music/DreamTheater very rarely plays songs from the "Twelve-Step Suite" after drummer and founding member Mike Portnoy's departure from the band in 2010. The "Suite" is a set of five connected songs[[note]]The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, The Root of All Evil, Repentance, and The Shattered Fortress[[/note]] written by Portnoy detailing his battle with alcoholism. The first three songs haven't been played at all since his departure. The fourth, ''Reptentance'', was only played live a single time even when Portnoy was with the band. The final song, ''The Shattered Fortress'', continued to be played until 2014, in large part because it was one of the hits of the band's 2009 ''Black Clouds & Silver Linings'' album, the final with Portnoy. For the same reason, ''The Mirror'', formerly one of their most-performed songs and officially considered a "prelude" to the Twelve-Step Suite, has also been retired from live play since 2014.
36	* Music/{{Eminem}}:
37	** "Cleanin' Out My Closet", a song detailing Eminem's strained relationship with his mother, was removed from his setlist after he reconciled with her in 2013.
38	** Eminem retired all his ''Music/{{Encore}}'' material from his live set once the album's era was over, owing to its negative reception amongst fans and critics; for a while he still performed "Like Toy Soldiers", then later added "Evil Deeds" and "Mosh".
39	** Virtually everything off of ''Relapse'' was only played live once or twice. Eminem was still relearning how to play live and only had a couple of gigs in which he performed ''Relapse'' material -- Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, the album launch party, and some televised live performances of the album's singles like "We Made You", "Crack A Bottle". Eminem then underwent a severe CreatorBacklash towards the album, and retired almost all material from the album other than "3 a.m.".
40	** Despite being a fan-favorite, "Kim" has never been performed live by Eminem due to a promise he made to Kim, who he murders in the song. It has been said that he broke this promise at a show in Detroit, leading to Kim's suicide attempt, but the actual incident was him bringing a blowup doll on stage to play 'Kim'.
41	* Music/{{Erra}} doesn’t play much from the 2015 EP ''A Moment of Clarity.'' The vocalist who tracked it, Ian Eubanks, was only in Erra for a short period of time thanks to poor technique and health issues. Once JT Cavey joined songs from the EP were dropped from set lists. They ''might'' bust out “Dreamcatcher” on a headliner set, but the last time they played that song was from 2019.
42	* Music/{{Evanescence}} have never played their songs "Hello" and "Like You" live as they are a tributes to lead singer Amy Lee's younger sister who died when Amy was 6 years old.
43	* John Fahey described ''Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice)'' as his greatest guitar album [[note]]Which is especially notable since the album came out in 1973, and he made that statement in 1990. Fahey was infamous for [[OldShame disliking any of his recordings more than a few years old]] and only ever being excited for his newest work. Praising ''Fare Forward Voyagers'' over a decade later was definitely an exception.[[/note]], but said its three songs were too "technically demanding" to perform live.
44	* Music/FleetwoodMac rarely performs their 1982 hit "Gypsy" due to the song becoming an unintentional GriefSong to Stevie Nicks' best friend Robyn Snyder Anderson, who died of cancer that same year.
45	* Music/FooFighters:
46	** They for the longest time refused to play "Big Me" live because whenever they did, [[ProducePelting they'd be pelted with Mentos mints,]] since the song's video spoofed Mentos commercials, frequently making Dave chastise their audience. They started playing it again after Music/{{Weezer}} covered it with great acclaim during their joint "Foozer" tour in 2005-'06.
47	** Dave Grohl is notably not a fan of their album ''One by One'', stating that seven of its eleven tracks are "sub-par". He claims to have never played them again after recording them, but fans claiming to have seen it live dispute this (only "Burn Away" and "Halo" didn't appear in any concerts). In either case, they are, at best, exceptionally rare plays.
48	** Inverted for the song "Butterflies." It was recorded on the original cassette tape version of their first album (in which Grohl played every instrument himself) but was [[CutSong not included]] in the CD release, or on any album since. However, the band does play it live, meaning "live" was the ''only'' way for most to hear it until it the cassette version was uploaded to [=YouTube=] and other similar sites.
49	** Many of their tracks have less than 15 plays, with some like "Hell", "Erase/Replace", "Come Back", "Concrete and Gold" and "Subterranean" having only been performed once. These rare tracks sadly include all but three songs off ''Medicine at Midnight'' given drummer Taylor Hawkins [[DiedDuringProduction died early in the album's tour]].
50	* 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 times he played any of Genesis' songs again were in 1982 as part of the one-off reunion concert [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_of_the_Best "Six of the Best"]] and in 2016, when [[Music/SellingEnglandByThePound "Dancing with the Moonlight Knight"]] was included in the ''Rock Paper Scissors'' tour that Gabriel did with Music/{{Sting}}. Even then, some shows had Sting perform the song instead of Gabriel.
51	* Music/{{Genesis\|Band}}:
52	** They opted to remove the TitleTrack to ''Music/{{Abacab}}'' from their setlists when they reunited in 2007, owed to Music/PhilCollins finding the song too incomprehensible for him to comfortably sing.
53	** "Illegal Alien" has never been performed in its entirety since [[Music/GenesisAlbum its parent album's]] supporting tour wrapped up in 1984, due to controversy over the song's highly stereotypical depiction of Mexican immigrants. The closest they got was including a snippet of it during a medley of past songs as part of the tour for ''Music/WeCantDance''.
54	** "Anything She Does" has only rarely shown up in the band's setlists over the years, most prominently being omitted from the ''Music/InvisibleTouch'' tour. In the companion documentary ''Visible Touch'', Tony Banks explained that this is because of the song's heavy reliance on sampled horns and synth bass, which makes it prohibitively difficult to play on-stage.
55	** The band avoided including any material from ''Music/CallingAllStations'' in their setlist during the 2007 and 2021 reunions. The album was made solely due to an AbileneParadox between Music/TonyBanks and Mike Rutherford, neither of whom wanted to continue the band after Music/PhilCollins left but assumed the other bandmate wished to do so, resulting in material that was widely panned by fans, critics, [[CreatorBacklash and the musicians involved]]. Consequently, Banks and Rutherford's poor memories of the album's production ensured that it would go unrepresented on stage (and off).
56	* After the Station nightclub fire in 2003 that killed 100 people, Great White refused to play the song they were performing when the fire broke out, "Desert Moon", for six years.
57	* The Music/GratefulDead had [[http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2015/07/abandoned-songs-1967-1974.html several songs]] they stopped playing over the years, but one that most vexed their devoted Deadhead fans were the three times they dropped "St. Stephen" out of their setlists. The song was played regularly between 1968 and 1971, occasionally between 1976 and 1979, and then only made three more appearances in 1983 before it was gone from the Dead's repertoire for good. In 1988, singer-guitarist Jerry Garcia explained that they'd gotten tired of playing it and that the song was "Unnecessarily difficult" and "inflexible," particularly the slow bridge in the middle of the song that he believed made it lose momentum. "St. Stephen", however, has regularly been played by the post-Dead bands of former members, particularly Dead & Company.
58	* 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 (for starters, Mike Dirnt plays a single tremolo-picked note in the intro for almost ''two minutes'').
59	* Music/GunsNRoses has two of the tracks from ''Music/AppetiteForDestruction'', "Anything Goes", which has not been played since 1988, and "Think About You", which had most of its plays between 2001 and 2006 (meaning Music/SlashMusician hasn't performed it since 1987!).
60	* Parodied in the ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'' short [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XecNSd_lOYs "Record Store Day"]]. Alt-rockers Sloshy release "B-est of B-sides", the most obscure song in their already-obscure discography, and the song specifically mentions in the chorus, "We'll never even play this song live."
61	* Music/IronMaiden:
62	** [[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 lamented never appearing in setlists was "Alexander the Great", which wouldn't see a live debut until the Future Past tour in 2023.
63	** Drummer Nicko [=McBrain=]'s dislike of double bass drum (according to the documentary ''The Early Days Pt. 1'', he considers it [[BuffySpeak "undrummerish"]]) is why "Face in the Sand", the only Maiden song where [=McBrain=] plays a drum kit of such kind, was left out of the ''Dance of Death'' tour, and any posterior tours.
64	** Guitarist Adrian Smith [[https://thequietus.com/articles/18529-iron-maiden-interview confirmed]] that the band have no intention of playing "Empire of the Clouds" live, owed to the complexity of its arrangement and [[EpicRocking its mammoth 18-minute length]], both of which caused no shortage of trouble for the band when recording it in the studio.
65	* Music/MichaelJackson dropped various songs from his concerts over the years. After the first half of his ''Music/{{Bad}}'' tour, Jackson completely stopped performing any of the hits he recorded with [[Music/TheJacksonFive his brothers]], save for a medley of Motown-era classics, likely due to lingering feelings over the ill-fated ''Victory'' Tour. Come the ''Music/{{Dangerous\|Album}}'' tour, he also stopped performing cuts from ''Music/OffTheWall'' and ''Bad'', with the exception of a small handful of songs. Had he lived to complete the ''[[Film/MichaelJacksonsThisIsIt This Is It]]'' residency in 2009, nearly all the songs he stopped performing in the past would have been performed live once more.
66	* A couple of the ''Film/JamesBond'' themes became this:
67	** 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 Music/JohnnyMathis and Music/FrankSinatra.
68	** Although Music/AliciaKeys included the song on her 2010 ''The Freedom Tour'', neither she nor Music/JackWhite has performed "Another Way to Die", the theme song of ''Film/QuantumOfSolace'', since then, likely due to its unpopularity.
69	* Music/BillyJoel: While "Just The Way You Are" is still one of his best-known hits, he stopped performing the song live in 1986 because he wrote it for his first wife, whom he later divorced in 1982. He wouldn't start performing it again until the 2000s, albeit jokingly parodying the lyrics in the chorus as "She got the house. She got the car"
70	* Music/EltonJohn:
71	** In spite of the single's popularity and it being his biggest hit since his 1976 duet with Kiki Dee "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", he has only performed his 1980 song "Little Jeannie" on his World Tour from the same year and the ''One Night Only'' performance twenty years later.
72	** His only performance of the 1997 version of "Candle In The Wind", which was dedicated to his good friend Princess Diana, was at her funeral. He has said that he will only play the song again if her sons Prince William and Prince Harry personally request it.
73	** John only rarely performed "Empty Garden", his GriefSong about the murder of his friend Music/JohnLennon, because as he once explained it was too personal and emotional for him.
74	* Music/KillswitchEngage has significantly decreased the number of times they play their famous 2006 cover of Music/RonnieJamesDio[='s=] "Holy Diver" live over the years. It was their mainstream BreakthroughHit (they were already popular in {{Metalcore}} circles) complete with a popular music video, though also something of a BlacksheepHit since it was a cover that differed from their usual style. In 2012, vocalist Howard Jones left the band to focus on his health and original vocalist Jesse Leach returned. Leach's differing style doesn't lend as well to "Holy Diver", leading to the decrease in live performances. The band does still play it, but much more rarely than their other hits. (It may only get played once or twice a year now.)
75	* While Music/KingCrimson'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."
76	* Due to the album's critical and commercial failure, Music/{{Kiss}} almost never perform songs from ''Music/MusicFromTheElder''.
77	** Also a number of songs from their 80s albums were rarely performed live. "Keep Me Comin" from "Creatures of the Night" was only ever performed twice during the tour and "Burn Bitch Burn" from "Animalize" was only ever performed ONCE live.
78	* Despite being Music/{{KMFDM}}'s best-known song, the band retired "Juke-Joint Jezebel" from setlists in 2004, owing to the frontman Sascha Konietzko's long-standing CreatorBacklash towards the song.
79	* Outside of a handful of early concerts, Music/{{Korn}} refused to play the song "Daddy" live due to its deeply personal subject matter of frontman Jonathan Davis' sexual abuse as a child. In 2015, Davis would relent and perform the song for a series of concerts commemorating the self-titled album's (from which "Daddy" came from) [=20th=] anniversary, since his abuser had died by then and thus he felt comfortable performing it.
80	* For unknown reasons, Music/{{Madonna}} has not performed her 1992 song "Bad Girl" in decades, with her only performance being her 1993 appearance as host and musical guest on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive''. She has also never sung her megahit "This Used to be My Playground" from the ''Film/ALeagueOfTheirOwn'' soundtrack live, either.
81	* Despite the commercial success of her 1999 debut bubblegum pop single "Candy", musician and actor Music/MandyMoore over time has felt embarrassed by her debut single and first two albums, describing them as "cheesy". Moore has even offered to refund the money of anyone who bought her first two albums. Lived up to it during a radio interview in '06. Yup, that's just how much she hated them. She seems to have softened on this however, as she celebrated the 20th anniversary of "Candy" in 2019 warmly and performed "Candy" as a blues-tuned version in 2020-'21 concerts.
82	* 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".
83	* 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. Other songs retired as a result of Dave's conversion include the band's cover of [[Music/SexPistols "Anarchy in the U.K."]] (beyond a one-off in 2016) and "Good Mourning/Black Friday".
84	* Music/{{Metallica}}:
85	** Despite being on their popular album ''Music/RideTheLightning'', the band has only ever played "Escape" live a single time during an anniversary concert where they played every song from the album. "Escape" was a last-minute addition to the album, literally written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich ''in'' the recording studio when they were [[ExecutiveMeddling told by the producer]] that they had to have one more song on the album, and the label wanted a song with a melodic hook for release as a single.[[note]]In the end, the singles were "Creeping Death", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", and "Fade to Black" instead.[[/note]]
86	** Metallica hadn't played "Orion" from ''Music/MasterOfPuppets'' in its entirety until 2006, having last played it at original bassist Cliff Burton's funeral in 1986. It's mainly because the middle portion of the song was built exclusively around Burton's bass-playing, which the following bassists struggled to match.
87	** Though it's their second best-selling album, it's rare for the band to play anything other than "One" from ''...And Justice For All'' live. It was their first album after Burton's death, new bassist Music/JasonNewsted was all but mixed out of the album altogether, and they didn't have their usual mixing producer, leading it to have an overly "sterile" and "tinny" sound lacking bass. It was also their most aggressive and technically demanding album, leading to burnout. Finally, the album has some of their longest songs, which, according to Hetfield, the crowds don't always respond well to when they're played live. Though many of its songs are beloved by fans, the band itself rarely plays most of them for these reasons. From the 2010s onward, "Blackened", "Harvester of Sorrow", and "The Shortest Straw" get played a few times a year, though "One" remains the album's only staple.
88	** Three songs off ''Music/{{Metallica\|Album}}'', "My Friend of Misery", "Don't Tread on Me", and "The Struggle Within", only had their live debuts 20 years after the album came out, as the band decided to celebrate the occasion by playing it in its entirety. Only "My Friend of Misery" had another performance other than those 20 concerts.
89	** "The Unforgiven II" from ''[[Music/LoadAndReLoad ReLoad]]'' is a sequel song to "The Unforgiven", one of the most popular songs from ''Metallica''. It was released as a single and had a music video, but as a slow PowerBallad, was a BlackSheepHit for the band. They initially played it live once at the Billboard Music Awards in 1997 (the same year ''[=ReLoad=]'' was released) before shelving it until 2015. Even after, they've only played it a total of 10 times as of 2022. In general quite a few songs from ''Load'' and ''[=ReLoad=]'' have either rarely been performed ("Poor Twisted Me", "Mama Said", "Outlaw Torn", "Carpe Diem Baby", "Fixxxer") or never been played ("The House That Jack Built", "Cure", "Ronnie", "Thorn Within", "Bad Seed").
90	** Given the CreatorBreakdown going on at the time of production (as explained in the tie-in documentary ''Some Kind of Monster'') and its status as a near-CreatorKiller, the band almost never plays anything from ''Music/StAnger'' these days. Even during the supporting tour some songs off that album were rarely played, with "Sweet Amber" only having been performed once in 2004.
91	* Despite it being one of his biggest hits, Music/GeorgeMichael stopped performing [[Music/FaithGeorgeMichaelAlbum "I Want Your Sex"]] after the Faith World Tour wrapped up in 1989, thanks to him viewing it as overly imitative of Music/{{Prince}}.
92	* Music/{{Muse}} have all but abandoned their debut album ''Music/{{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, and in 2023 after having technical difficulties while closing a gig with "Music/KnightsOfCydonia". 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.
93	* Music/MyChemicalRomance:
94	** My Chemical Romance hasn't played "Drowning Lessons" from ''I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love'' since the early 2000's, due to live performances of it being plagued with technical mishaps to the point where it was dubbed 'cursed' in a tweet by bassist Mikey Way.
95	** "Desert Song" is another rarely-played song, written about frontman and singer Gerard Way's struggles with alcoholism and suicidality and allegedly only ever performed drunk. Last performed in 2008, it received a TriumphantReprise as the final song in their set on 9/11/2022.
96	* Music/NewOrder:
97	** The band kept their entire discography as Music/JoyDivision out of their setlist until 1998 to avoid being compared to their prior incarnation, which was renamed following the 1980 suicide of frontman Ian Curtis.
98	** Despite being a fan-favorite, [[Music/LowLife "The Perfect Kiss"]] disappeared from their concerts between 1993 and 2006, due to difficulties with converting the sample programming to newer equipment.
99	** 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. In a 2023 interview with the ''Irish Times'', Gillian Gilbert claimed that the album's lack of on-stage representation is due to frontman Bernard Sumner considering it "unfinished."
100	** 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, with the exception of the hit single "Regret", which remains a concert staple.
101	* Music/NineInchNails:
102	** The band didn't perform "Sunspots", originally released on ''With Teeth'' in 2005, live (bar some sound checks/rehearsals) until the Brixton leg of the NIN 2022 tour, due to Trent Reznor's fear of straining his voice too much during the song.
103	** Reznor's vocal strain is also why "We're In This Together", released in 1999 on ''[[Music/TheFragile1999 The Fragile]]'', has only been performed during the European leg of the Performance 2007 tour. The live performance was also in a lower key than the studio version.
104	** Reznor's frustration with "The Perfect Drug", as well as the difficult drum solo of the song, led to it only being performed live in 2018, 21 years after it was recorded.
105	** "Last" was not performed live until 2007, 15 years after it was released, due to being "too fucking hard to sing" in Trent's words and has only been sporadically performed since.
106	** The original 1994 album version of "Hurt" from ''Music/TheDownwardSpiral'' is rarely, if ever, played anymore. The song has a bit of a "cursed" reputation in that several live performances of it have been interrupted for various circumstances (such as technical difficulties and fan trolling), and when it was CoveredUp so well by Music/JohnnyCash in 2002, Reznor outright said "that song isn't mine anymore". Still, they continued to play it until about 2005, where they began almost exclusively playing a toned-down version, literally called "Hurt (Quiet Version)", at all live performances. It features Reznor providing vocals and playing the keyboard, with the rest of the band only joining in at the final chorus.
107	* Music/{{Northlane}}:
108	** 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.
109	** The first two Marcus Bridge albums ''Node'' and ''Mesmer'' stopped showing up in shows after 2020. The latter in particular was a near CreatorKiller for Northlane and were all too happy to abandon the album once ''Alien'' dropped.
110	* Music/OingoBoingo: Even though "Weird Science" is one of the band's [[SignatureSong most well-known songs]], due to it being written for the [[Film/WeirdScience movie of the same name]], the band stopped playing it live due to frontman Creator/DannyElfman believing that the song isn't his best work and [[CreatorBacklash getting tired of it]]. Even during Coachella 2022, in which Elfman played several of Oingo Boingo's most popular songs, he didn't perform "Weird Science".
111	* After the PaterFamilicide of wrestler Wrestling/ChrisBenoit and his family, Music/OurLadyPeace had since admitted they would never play "Whatever", Benoit's theme, again; and the Wrestling/{{WWE}} themselves blacklisted the song. The song had already been removed from their setlists for years prior to Benoit's death.
112	* Music/{{Phish}}:
113	** Phish occasionally plays rare songs (known to their fans as "Bust-outs") that they haven't played in years during their concerts, including songs that hadn't been seen in decades or had only been played once or twice before, so very few songs are ever out of their repertoire for good. One song that probably is, however, is "Jennifer Dances", which was only played four times in December 1999 before vanishing from their set lists. Reportedly, the band discarded the song because word got back to them that their devoted fanbase absolutely hated it. It's become a sort of meme in the Phish community in the years since, and it made a goofy reappearance at a July 2014 concert, when drummer Jon Fishman sang a couple lines from the song before admitting he'd forgotten the rest.
114	** "Harpua" and the pairing of "Colonel Forbin's Ascent" and "Fly Famous Mockingbird" are three of Phish's most beloved songs, with many fans hoping they get the chance to hear them at any given concert. One of the reasons for this is "Harpua" and "Mockingbird" both feature long narrated stories by guitarist Trey Anastasio that he changed every time they played them and which were usually connected to the band's Gamehendge mythos. However, they've all become rarer in later years. "Forbin" and "Mockingbird" stopped being regular features in Phish concerts after 1996, with just 11 more performances in the 25 years following. "Harpua" also largely dropped out of the band's repertoire by the late 90s, with just eight more performances after 2000. The songs usually only appear on special occasions, like their 2023 New Year's Eve concert.
115	* Music/{{Prince}} refused to play the TitleTrack to ''[[Music/NineteenNinetyNineAlbum 1999]]'' in concert during the first half of the 2000s, feeling that its constant references to the year 1999 made it too dated to play in the 21st century; his New Year's Day 2000 performance was intended to be the song's final live appearance as a result. He would eventually relent in 2007 when he included it in his Super Bowl XLI halftime setlist, with the song returning to his regular concerts afterward.
116	* Music/{{Psychostick}} rarely plays "Orgasm = Love", a fan favorite from their very first album, live. Vocalist and songwriter Rob "Rawrb" Kersey noted that "this song was written during a weird phase in my life. I was going through some weird turbulent stuff with relationships" and at one point dubbed it a "studio only" song when asked by a fan if they would ever play it live. Additionally, it's a slow PowerBallad for an otherwise "thrashy" comedy metal band, giving it BlackSheepHit vibes. The band has ultimately relented, playing it live on a few occasions, but nowhere near as often as other songs of its popularity.
117	* Music/{{Queen\|Band}}:
118	** 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. Interestingly, surviving bootlegs of their performances of the song show the crowd taking to it just as you'd expect from what would go on to be known as one of Queen's greatest.
119	** With the sole exception of "Under Pressure", which remains a concert staple to this day, material from ''Music/HotSpace'' hardly shows up in the band's live shows thanks to Music/BrianMay and Roger Taylor's dislike of it and the major backlash that its {{disco}} sound spawned.
120	* Music/{{Radiohead}}:
121	** For a long time, the band refrained from performing their BreakthroughHit [[Music/PabloHoney "Creep"]], due to their discontent with audiences only showing up to hear that song and leaving right after it was over. They eventually made peace with the song and added it back to their setlist in 2016.
122	** Barring "Creep", the only other songs they have performed from ''Music/PabloHoney'' since 2000 are "You," "Lurgee" and "Blow Out," the latter being performed as recently as 2018. The band still has a strong amount of CreatorBacklash towards the album.
123	** The non-album single "Pop Is Dead" hasn't been played live since 1995, thanks to the band's massive CreatorBacklash towards it (which later led to it becoming the only song of theirs that is currently [[BuryYourArt out of print]]).
124	** Despite being a hit single for the band, [[Music/TheBends "High and Dry"]] hasn't appeared in concert since 1998, thanks to the band members' CreatorBacklash towards it.
125	** They rarely perform "Let Down" from ''Music/OKComputer'' live, since the song's effects are difficult to recreate live.
126	* Music/RedHotChiliPeppers has rarely played their 1989 single "Knock Me Down" live in concert, since it was written about their fallen guitar player Hillel Slovak, making it too emotional to revisit. On at least one occasion, three of the band members wanted to perform the song but singer Anthony Kiedis refused. The band also rarely performed songs from ''One Hot Minute'', with Chad Smith claiming, "We don't really feel that connected to that record anymore. No special reason, not to say we'd never play those songs, but we don't feel that emotionally connected to that music right now”.
127	* Music/{{REM}}:
128	** The band stopped playing "Catapult" live after 1984 due to their bad memories of attempting to record it for ''Music/{{Murmur}}'' with producer Stephen Hague. Hague was an acidic perfectionist during the band's tryout sessions with him, and the Sisyphean process of recording the song deeply demoralized them before they eventually got fed up and convinced Creator/IRSRecords to replace him with prior collaborators Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. Even after they recorded a satisfactory version of "Catapult" with Easter and Dixon, R.E.M. couldn't perform it on-stage without thinking back to their turbulent first attempts with Hague.
129	** Their 1991 BlackSheepHit "[[Music/OutOfTime Shiny Happy People]]" is an interesting case. Depending on the source, the band refuse to perform the song in concert due to either [[CreatorBacklash absolutely hating the song]] or because they find it too difficult to perform live. Furthermore, they also bounce between either hating the song or having a love-hate relationship with it.
130	** The song "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" was a fairly well-received single, and the band members themselves seemed to like the song, since they always included it on compilations and generally described it as a good track that managed to lighten the rather somber mood of the album ''Music/AutomaticForThePeople''. Despite this, they never played the song live.
131	* Music/{{The Rolling Stones\|Band}}:
132	** While "Brown Sugar" from ''Music/StickyFingers'' 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. Although both Music/MickJagger and Music/KeithRichards have expressed hope to bring it back in the future.
133	** Their cover of Bob & Earl's "Harlem Shuffle" is pretty much the only song off of ''Music/DirtyWork'' that they've played live since (as it's their biggest hit from the album), but even then it's just on rare occasions.
134	* 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.
135	* 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 numerous pogroms against Jewish communities since the middle ages (including 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.
136	* Music/{{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 should be "in a minor key, and in the past tense" ("We were young, we ran green" etc).
137	* Music/TaylorSwift has only performed "Soon You'll Get Better" off her 2019 album ''Music/{{Lover}}'' once, to raise money for COVID-19 relief. The song is about Swift's mother's battle with cancer, and she's stated it was incredibly difficult to write and she nearly didn't put it on the album at all because of how personal it is. Prior to the fundraiser, she said that she wouldn't perform the song live because the topic is so painful for her.
138	* Due to the number of instruments required to perform it, Music/TheWho hasn't performed their song "The Song Is Over" in concert.
139	* Music/SystemOfADown's "Dreaming" features several vocal tracks from Serj and Daron overlaid on top of each other. It's never been played live as a result.
140	* Music/{{Tool}}:
141	** "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.
142	** "Rosetta Stoned" was one of the top 10 most-played songs in concert after the release of ''10,000 Days'' in 2006, but has only been played four times since 2009 and not at all since the release of ''Fear Inoculum'' in 2019. The distorted, rapid-fire, almost stream-of-consciousness lyrics plus ''seven'' changes in [[UncommonTime time signature]] and inclusion of unconventional percussion instruments make it one of the most challenging songs in the catalogue for each band member, likely contributing to its decline in performances.
143	* Music/{{U2}}:
144	** They retired "Exit" (from ''Music/TheJoshuaTree'') from their setlist after Robert John Bardo (murderer of actress Rebecca Shaeffer) claimed that the song influenced his actions. The band would later bring the song back for ''The Joshua Tree'''s 30th anniversary tours, where they played the album in its entirety.
145	** "One Tree Hill", from the same album, is also rarely performed due to it being a GriefSong for Greg Carroll, a roadie for the band and friend of Bono's who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1986. Most performances of the song take place in Carroll's home country, UsefulNotes/NewZealand (where the song was released as a single), though the band did also bring the song back for ''The Joshua Tree'''s anniversary tours.
146	** They retired "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (from ''[[Music/WarU2Album War]]'') for some years as the result of a performance ''one day'' after [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day_bombing the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen]] in 1987, captured in the documentary ''Rattle and Hum'' (released the following year), in which Bono went on a fiery rant emphatically denouncing the IRA and their actions on that day (the lyrics of the song itself don't denounce either side explicitly for fear of reprisals, which led some to interpret it as being supportive of their cause). The band decided they could never top the performance or the raw emotion they felt on that day. However they brought it back on a full-time basis in the late '90s (probably not coincidentally, just as the Good Friday Agreement was coming into force) and it has remained on their setlists ever since.
147	* Music/VanHalen wrote very few songs that didn't find a place in their setlist at some point, but one noteworthy exception is "Feels So Good" from 1988. It was a modest hit for the band, peaking at #35 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #6 on the Rock charts in the US, and they filmed a music video for it too. But for reasons unknown it's the only official single they released that they never played live.
148	* Due to his CreatorBacklash towards both albums, Music/RogerWaters rarely plays songs from ''The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking'' or ''Radio K.A.O.S.'' live, though he did perform the ''Pros and Cons'' track "5:06 AM (Every Stranger's Eyes)" on his 2000 ''In the Flesh'' tour.
149	* Music/TheWho: The group retired "A Quick One, While He's Away" for some time. Pete Townshend initially wrote it on a whim as a light-hearted story about affairs and a love triangle. But years later, he started seeing it as a metaphor for the sexual abuse and other bad experiences he suffered while living with his grandmother as a child. In his autobiography, he claims that he might have subconsciously written the song as a way to cope. They retired the song from their concerts for many years until TheNewTens, when they began include more deep cuts.
150	* Music/WeirdAlYankovic:
151	** In a 2015 interview, Al stated that he no longer performs "Jerry Springer" live due to its frequent use of terms now recognized as slurs. He also avoids performing the popular "Albuquerque", off [[Music/RunningWithScissors the same album]], because its 12-minute EpicRocking length and extensive passages of comedic yelling and screaming put a strain on his vocal cords, saving it for special occasions (namely, when he is performing in UsefulNotes/{{Albuquerque}}, UsefulNotes/NewMexico), though he did bring it back into regular rotation for both Ridiculously Self Indulgent tours.
152	** Due to the difficulty involved with replicating its MotorMouth bridge, Al refuses to perform the fan-favorite song [[Music/PoodleHat "Hardware Store"]] live.
153	** 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/DangerousAlbum "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. As "Snack All Night" has never appeared on one of his albums or as a standalone single (at the request of Jackson, who felt that the original song's message should not have been diluted by parody) it is now impossible to listen to legally.
154	* Music/XJapan largely abandoned their debut album ''Vanishing Vision'' after reuniting in 2008, likely due to the deaths of Hide and Taiji leading to their songs being retired ("Sadistic Desire", "Phantom of Guilt") as well as many of Yoshiki's compositions ("Vanishing Love", "I'll Kill You") containing extremely difficult drumming that would be painful for him to perform due to aging and previous injuries. The two exceptions are "Kurenai", which would later be re-recorded for the band's sophomore album ''Blue Blood'' and is considered a contender for the band's SignatureSong, and "Unfinished", which was also re-recorded for ''Blue Blood''.
155	* Music/YellowMagicOrchestra:
156	** [[Music/YellowMagicOrchestraAlbum "Mad Pierrot"]] was taken out of the band's setlist following their earliest performances in 1978, due to the song's fast pace and dense arrangement making it difficult to consistently replicate.
157	** [[Music/{{BGM}} "U•T"]] was removed from the band's setlist after their initial dissolution in 1984. While it was scheduled to be played during their 1993 reunion tour, it was taken out after the band discovered that it was recorded in an obsolete equipment standard, making it prohibitively difficult to perform again.
158	* Despite being a major fan-favorite, Music/NeilYoung scarcely performs songs from his 1973 LiveAlbum ''Time Fades Away'', thanks to bad memories of the tour it was taken from that resulted in major CreatorBacklash, with Young dismissing the album in 1987 as his worst and [[BuryYourArt refusing to reissue it]] for several decades.

Context Main / RarelyPerformedSong