Line #125 NeverLiveItDown/Music


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3	%% Due to the nature of this trope, finding a proper image will be very tricky.
4	%% DO NOT add an image to this page without discussing it in Image Pickin' first.
5	%% See this Image Pickin' thread for reference: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1479895973057491700
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8	%% NeverLiveItDown is a YMMV trope about audience reactions. InUniverse examples belong under OnceDoneNeverForgotten.
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11	* Music/TheSweet: Preferring to be associated with their hard rock songs like "Ballroom Blitz", "Love Is Like Oxygen" and "Fox on the Run", this British glam rock group never was able to distance itself from their biggest hit ever, the bubblegum sounding "Little Willy".
12	* If you look at his portrayal in popular media, you'd think Music/JimiHendrix [[RockersSmashGuitars burned his guitar]] at every concert when he actually only did so three times in his entire career (although that's three more than the vast majority of guitarists have burned in their careers). Also, the popularity of "Hey Joe" got to the point where it would be constantly requested, to Hendrix's chagrin. In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa_e9R_19w4 this performance]] on British pop star Lulu's program, the Experience stops playing it midway, Hendrix says "We'd like to stop playing this rubbish", and they launch into an impromptu cover of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love".
13	* Zbigniew Wodecki was a gifted singer, violinist, trumpeter, songwriter and composer. He spent over 40 years on stage, sold thousands of albums and won many prestigious awards. But for many Poles he'll always be the performer of the theme song from ''Literature/MayaTheBee'' (in Polish ''Pszczółka Maja''). For many years, Wodecki hated being asked about Maya - either in interviews or during concerts. However, later in his career he finally realized there is no escape from that "curse" and he included the ''Pszczółka Maja'' song into his repertoire.
14	* Famed singer {{Music/Chris Brown}}, brutally assaulted fellow singer {{Music/Rihanna}} in 2009. Since then, his career has never been the same, and continues to be shamed even though he apologized in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy4wrJ4-q1Q this news report]].
15	* Music/{{Darude}}'s song "Sandstorm" became a hit in the early 2000s, but in the mid-2010s and later it turned the EDM version of the JustForFun/{{Rickroll}} as a form to send this song as an answer to someone who doesn't know the name of some song that they listened in some video on Website/YouTube. After that, it became a RunningGag to most of the actual listeners of this song, and it's hard to reach comments [[https://youtu.be/y6120QOlsfU in the song's music video]] that don't say something like "what's the name of this song?" rather than commenting about the song itself.
16	%% * Despite a number of his later albums having pro-God lyrics, Music/{{Esham}} is still best known for his early [[{{Horrorcore}} Satanic lyrical themes]].
17	* Music/{{Soulfly}} is one of the most respected bands to emerge from the NuMetal scene (thanks to [[Music/{{Sepultura}} Max]] [[IAmTheBand Cavalera]]), but he'll never be able to live down the fact that he made a song called "Jumpdafuckup", the name of which was promptly used to mock nu metal bands similar to his.
18	* Music/{{Disturbed}}:
19	** Their SignatureSong "Down with the Sickness" is probably most known for the staccato scream-[[BuffySpeak thing]] that David Draiman does near the beginning and end (Oh-wa-ah-ah-ah!!). He's only used this technique possibly three or four times in the band's discography, but since the song has seen use in a number of film trailers and other media, the group's detractors have taken to calling them "The Monkey Noise Band".
20	** Another issue some of the band have is the drum solo that opens the song with a distinctive "THUD" that has made some believe their drummer Mike Wengren hits the drums too hard (it was actually created through applying 2-ply, coated heads on the toms). Wengren dislikes how this sound buries much of his work under layers of reverb, and has been increasingly been trying to work towards a cleaner sound both in how he plays and in mixing and post-production.
21	** Also, the "abuse" segment during the climax of the song, which to some people, comes off as over-the-top, [[{{Narm}} Narmy]] {{Wangst}}. It's completely removed from the radio edit, and most people agree that this is one case where the censorship improves the song.
22	* The upstate New York band Orleans had two big hits in the 1970's with "Dance With Me" and "Still the One". In addition, band leader John Hall has had a successful post-music career as a political activist and Congressman. However, he and the band still have to contend with memories of [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Orleans_-_Waking_and_Dreaming.png this less-than-dignified album cover.]]
23	* Music/BobDylan has had a career stretching just under 50 years and just over 50 albums. Of all this, only two albums recorded early on in his career could be considered pure "protest" albums and most of his songs have ever dealt with personal affairs, sexual politics or sheer surreal imagery. In fact he even disowned his protest period in his song "My Back Pages" from ''Music/AnotherSideOfBobDylan''. Despite this, certain people still insist on labelling him a 'protest' singer.
24	* Music/BillySquier will never live down the bizarre "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvl2aqIyNg Rock Me Tonight]]" video that showed him cavorting on a bedroom set in a pink tank top and led to suspicions that he was gay and an irreversible career decline.
25	* Music/ImogenHeap is most popular for her "Hide And Seek", due to the MemeticMutation related to it. People however ignore the meaning of the song, the lyrics, and any other part other than the meme-related part. In fact, most people associate it now with Jason Derulo.
26	* Music/DavidSylvian, an ambient musician, will never live down the work of his pop band Music/{{Japan}}, especially their debut album ''Adolescent Sex'' which really embarrasses him.
27	* {{Music/David Guetta}} forgot to turn on his equipment at the Belgian music festival, Tomorrowland in 2012. So he had to improvise by pretending to DJ. Since this was discovered, he is now considered the laughing stock of the ElectronicDanceMusic community even though he's continued to DJ normally since then.
28	** Guetta’s infamous summer 2020 tribute to [[UsefulNotes/BlackLivesMatterMovement George Floyd]], qualifies as well - and this time, it’s not just the EDM community who pointed and laughed. When he gave a disjointed plea for peace throughout the world, “and America too, actually,” ending with “Shout out to his family,” right before a bass drop sampling a speech from '''UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr''', that set became a MemeticMutation pretty much overnight, and it’s still well remembered years later. He still hasn’t lived it down.
29	* Greg Ham, the flutist on the Music/MenAtWork song "Down Under", will be remembered forever for plagiarizing "Kookaburra" while jamming under the influence during the recording of the song.
30	* Thanks to their songs "My Immortal" and "Bring Me To Life", Music/{{Evanescence}} will forever be known as emo.
31	* [[Music/BoBRapper B.o.B.]] will never live down "Flatline", which he released after a Twitter beef with UsefulNotes/NeilDeGrasseTyson. The song expresses B.o.B.'s belief that [[FlatWorld the Earth is flat]] (among other conspiracies), and has speech clips by Tyson himself disproving the theory.
32	* Music/WakingTheCadaver are eternally infamous for their first album, ''Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler'', which set new lows for creative bankruptcy in the {{deathcore}} genre, both in terms of the songwriting and arrangements, which are incoherent and ''highly'' derivative of the entire Slam DeathMetal genre, as well as the lyrics, which are larded down with [[MisogynySong juvenile rape-and-murder fantasies]] that would horrify any sane person if [[{{Narm}} they weren't so hilarious]] (not to mention [[ArtisticLicenseBiology biologically improbable at best]]). The best known song off this album, "Chased Through The Woods By A Rapist", is mostly this for the MemeticMutation "I LIKE SHREDDED WHEAT!!!". It's so bad that even deathcore fans only rarely give the benefit of the doubt to their later releases ''Beyond Cops, Beyond God'' and ''Real-Life Death'', which are much better from a purely technical standpoint, not to mention devoid of misogynistic lyrics, if still terribly derivative and uninspired.
33	* OneHitWonder artist Q Lazzarus was best (read: only) known for her 1988 single "Goodbye Horses". It was a hit song when it came out, and the song is notable for Lazzarus' distinct contralto singing voice and use of Hindu symbolism. Then ''Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' came along, and since then any discussion of the song is quickly bombarded with references to Buffalo Bill dancing.
34	* Any mention of Tommy Flanagan will inevitably have something to do with his lousy playing on the title track of Music/GiantSteps. Sure, Coltrane just handed him the chart to a ridiculously difficult, ridiculously fast tune and expected him to play it.[[note]]Some sources say he had it a week in advance (still not enough time to master it) but thought it was a ballad.[[/note]] Sure, his playing on the rest of the album was top-notch. Sure, he re-recorded it years later, to demonstrate that he could play it. But that's what he's remembered for. Sad.
35	* Music/TheChainsmokers may be one of the biggest EDM stars today, but they'll never be able to live down the fact that their BreakthroughHit was 2014's "#SELFIE", an annoying novelty dance song about, well, taking a selfie. At one point it seemed to have doomed them to OneHitWonder status. While they proved that wasn't the case, the fact that they made it when talking about where they're at now (being outright superstars who constantly score Top 10, even chart-topping singles) is often brought up as a miraculous escape from one-hit wonderdom.
36	* In the world of [[KoreanPopMusic K-Pop]], Music/{{EXID}} is mostly known via [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmKuGxb23z0 this particular fancam of their member Hani when they're performing Up & Down]]. In an example of never living down something ''good'', this fancam was pretty much ''the'' catalyst of their popularity. Thanks to the fancam, they went from a group that was probably destined to fold and have limited success[[note]]Whilst the other songs they have before have decent chart rankings, Up & Down was charted poorly at first, failing to make to the top 100 of Korea's Gaon Charts[[/note]] into a respectable and solid upper-mid tier girl group. As for the particular song that they were performing on that fancam, Up & Down, it rises to #1 of the music charts in the following months thanks to the fancam[[note]]The highest the song got in the charts before the fancam happened was a lowly '''#94''', and that's on domestic charts only[[/note]].
37	%% * Music/JudasPriest wrote some of the most fundamentally influential and groundbreaking heavy metal songs in the 1970s, and went back to that style in later years. Sadly all those works will forever be eclipsed by "Breaking the law, breaking the law!!!"
38	%% * {{Invoked\|Trope}} in the lyrics of The Cruel Sea's "The Honeymoon is Over":
39	%% --> I should have left you, baby, back in that last town\
40	%%'Cause the kind of fool you made me, girl, I'll never live it down!
41	* Music/TaylorSwift has written about a wide variety of subjects and themes, including her own shortcomings as a person. Ask any non-fan about her discography, and they'll tell you that all she writes are {{Breakup Song}}s that portray her as the victim.
42	* Music/IcedEarth: It is highly unlikely that the band's [[IAmTheBand leader and main man Jon Schaffer]] will ever live down his role in storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. These days, being an insurrectionist is all he's known for and any Iced Earth outlet on social media from 2021 onward generally sees more fan jokes about treason and bear mace than they do questions about or praise for the band's music.
43	* If you don't know Music/{{Metallica}} -- one of the most popular and well-respected ThrashMetal acts in the world -- for their actual music, chances are you probably know them for drummer/co-founder Lars Ulrich's infamous [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil crusade against Napster and peer-to-peer digital music sharing]] in the early 2000's, one of the most controversial moves ever made by a rockstar (bear in mind, this was during an era when Metallica were being accused of [[SellOut mainstream sellouts]]). Ulrich and the band at large have chilled out significantly on the matter over the years (releasing music on streaming platforms, old footage online for free, giving free digital copies to concert attendees, and such), but even decades later, Metallica is still mocked by some for their "war on [=MP3s=]".
44	** In a more album-specific case, ''Music/StAnger'' is widely seen as the band's worst album, but the one thing ''everyone'' remembers is the bizarrely tinny, clanging snare that Ulrich uses throughout the entire thing, compared to the sound of banging on a trash can. To this date, it's considered the band's dumbest and most confusing production choice, arguably [[SoBadItsGood to the point that it became endearing]].
45	* Music/SufjanStevens initially hyped up the "Fifty States Project" -- in which he would be doing a series of albums each based of the fifty states of America -- but only came out with ''Michigan'' and ''{{Music/Illinois}}'' [[OrphanedSeries before admitting a few years later that it was ultimately a "promotional gimmick", and that he didn't fully intend on following through with the pitch]]. That admission came in 2009, but news publications are ''still'' mentioning this any time he or his body of work gets discussed, with it becoming likely the single thing most non-fans know about him [[ObscurePopularity aside from his reputation as otherwise being a critical darling]]. As of 2020, Stevens' publicist explicitly informs journalists before interviews to ''not ask him about it'', as he's evidently sick of having to talk about it even decades later.
46	* Arthur Lee, of the band {{Music/Love}} never lived down the line "when I was in England Town" from their song "She Comes In Colours", to the point where it was a rueful running joke between him and the rest of the band, especially Bryan McClean. In an interview for British television, just before his death, he grinningly wondered "Why the heck I didn't sing London Town, or Manchester Town, is beyond me!" But he took it well, and said he didn't want to interfere with the original by recording a different version.

Context NeverLiveItDown / Music