10 songs that artists refuse to revisit

‘Illume’ – Stevie Nicks

The entire world seemed to stop on a dime the minute that the Twin Towers were knocked down on 9/11. Although many people did what they could to help, there was a gaping wound left in the US that would never be filled, no matter how hard anyone tried. The least anyone could do was try to find some way to work through the pain, and Stevie Nicks managed to channel many of her own struggles into ‘Illume’.

While the song was never meant to be anything more than a musical catharsis, Nicks wrote it as a way for her to feel safe after watching all of the horrors that people were witnessing on TV that day. Although the song did end up being one of the major standouts on the Fleetwood Mac album Say You Will, no one should expect Nicks to be playing it during her next concert tour.

Outside of it no longer being relevant, Nicks said that she gets too overcome with emotion every time she has to sing the tune, never bothering to include it on any of her setlists. Although she put her pain into words in a way that few others could at the time, maybe it’s better that we sing along to lines about letting the rain wash us clean rather than dealing with our collective internal trauma.

‘Georgie Porgie’ – A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest were always the last people that were known for their bouts with controversy. Even when rap beefs were at an all-time high, it was clear that they were in no position to be cutthroat, which makes MC Hammer’s digs at them seem a little bit shallow. If The Low End Theory had gone differently, we could have been treated to one of the most poorly aged aspects of Tribe’s catalogue.

Then again, there’s a lot to like about ‘Georgie Porgie’ if you don’t bother to look at the lyrics. The entire backing track was eventually folded into ‘Show Business’, but whereas that was about the problems that Q-Tip and Phife Dawg were dealing with when they were on the come-up, this is all about how anyone who is a homosexual in their general vicinity deserves to be beaten severely for their sins against humanity.

Not only does this not make any sense in the context of the album, but it seems like the antithesis of what Tribe stood for. As Tip said in the past, they do their thing and lay low, so having a song that’s all about homophobic behaviour is the opposite of what they were shooting for. It might have been changed at the last minute, but had this been on the final version, it would really change how most people see Tribe.

‘Child in Time’ – Deep Purple

Every vocalist has those few songs that they see as a challenge to themselves. As much as it might be fun to stay within their range, it can be interesting to write a song solely to push your voice into areas where it hadn’t been before. And while rock and roll had its fair share of high singers by the time Deep Purple began, Ian Gillan turned in the kind of performance that sounds like it belongs in the middle of a horror movie.

Although ‘Child In Time’ has a more cosmic backing track compared to their usual rock and roll tunes, the breakdown of the song is a real vocal solo for minutes on end, with Gillan reaching further and further into his register. The song may have become even more intense when they were playing it live during the tour for Made in Japan, but now Gillan only wants to be practical when taking to the stage.

He knows that years of singing can do a number on the vocal cords, and there was no way he would try to hit those high notes again, leading to them retiring the song for good years after the fact. But not being able to do it now isn’t even a problem. Listening to it in context, this is the scream that you only need to pull off once to gain the respect of hard rock fans around the world.

‘Rocka Rolla’ – Judas Priest

There’s always been a mystery as to who the first genuine heavy metal band was. Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin were the ones who paved the way for everyone else going forward, but Judas Priest were among the first to truly claim the genre for themselves clad in the leather and bondage gear. But that’s not how they started, and Rob Halford is completely fine with ignoring ‘Rocka Rolla’ for the rest of time.

Although the band’s debut is far from a bad record, the title track shows everything wrong with this incarnation of the group. They had already let go of original singer Al Atkins when making the majority of the record, but since he wrote all of the lyrics and the music, Halford sounds like he’s singing in a less-than-enthusiastic karaoke bar, only finding a few times to break out his signature shriek on the record itself.

Even though ‘Rocka Rolla’ is a decent foot for any dad-rock band to start on, ‘Victim of Changes’ introduced the real version of Priest to the world. That original version of the band was officially dead and gone, and while some fans may have been disheartened, the rest of the congregation were more than happy to see where the rest of their career was going.

‘Misery Business’ – Paramore

It’s never easy to judge how well a song will age. Even though some tracks have a decent track record of holding up throughout the years, something that an artist writes in their 20s isn’t the greatest time capsule once they hit their 30s. And while Paramore never struck out all that often on record, Hayley Williams could admit when a handful of their songs were more than a little bit troublesome.

Which is strange talking about one of the group’s biggest hits. ‘Misery Business’ remains one of the best hooks that they ever made, but when listening to the lyrics, it was clear that Williams had a lot of pent-up anger she needed to get out of her system, which eventually resulted in the line about this person being nothing more than a whore. It’s easy to get lost in the anger, but there’s a tiny bit of hate being thrown around by simply calling someone that in a love triangle.

And given that the song is one of their most profitable, it’s an incredibly brave move for the band to stop playing it live for a while. There are a handful of occasions where they have brought it back, but especially when the MeToo movement was starting, people didn’t need to hear this kind of logic in a rock and roll breakup song.

‘Panic Song’ – Green Day

Green Day’s material has never been known to be the most intricate thing in the world. Billie Joe Armstrong would probably tell anyone that he is far from the greatest guitar player in the world, but listening to the songwriting going on in his greatest tracks, hardly anyone really cares, either. But the band can sound ferocious when they want to, and they managed to cross the line more than a few times on Insomniac.

‘Jaded’ might be one of the angriest songs they have ever made, but ‘Panic Song’ is the moment where everything went off the rails. Whereas most people see Mike Dirnt as a true virtuoso in the group, hearing him go for broke for one minute by himself feels like an endurance test to work through on the record, only aided by the fact that Tre Cool is flying off the handle as well, to the point where he tore the callouses off his hands to play it exactly right.

So when there are that many headaches before the band even plays it live, it makes sense why they always claim it’s the one song too hard for them ever to perform again. Armstrong might have a cakewalk only playing a handful of notes for the first few minutes, but since this is meant to simulate what a panic attack is supposed to feel like, hearing the band sound this desperate is probably not the best headspace for them to be in.

‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’ – AC/DC

It can seem near-impossible for any band to replace their frontman at any point in their career. They are often the person doing most of the talking, so how would the glorified mascot be able to be thrown out and traded in for someone else? It’s never an easy decision to make, but AC/DC might be the perfect case of finding the ideal replacement for Bon Scott once Brian Johnson entered the room.

Even though Johnson doesn’t always sound like his predecessor, his ability to bark out the lyrics to every one of their songs endeared him to the group immediately. He never intended to replace the legend, so that meant him serving as a stand-in for Scott whenever they played. And while all of their work is done in service to their founder, that also meant retiring songs that are a bit too tied to his legacy like ‘It’s A Long Way to the Top’.

Despite being one of their first major singles, hearing Scott sing this with his bagpipes is a bit too indicative of his spirit to be authentically played by Johnson. There’s no doubt that he would give it his all whenever he got the opportunity to play it, but unless he suddenly starts breaking out the bagpipes himself, there was no way that he was going even to bother touching his legacy.

‘One In a Million’ – Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses were never meant to be the safe choice for a rock and roll band. They were coming at rock and roll from a punk perspective, and if they managed to piss off a few people in the meantime, that was an added bonus. But Axl Rose also liked to run his mouth a little too much whenever he played, and while that’s fun at first, it only takes one wrong move for people to start looking at him sideways.

GNR Lies may have been intended as the kind of comedown from Appetite for Destruction, but Rose was no less angry when inhabiting the character in ‘One In a Million’. According to this unnamed person Rose is portraying, immigrants are ruining America as well as minorities and homosexuals, and even if someone does genuinely feel that way, it’s hard to take him seriously when he’s using various slurs to work his way around the issues, especially when Slash is half-black on his mom’s side.

The band have hardly ever bothered to play the tune live, but listening to all of the press they got for putting it out, did they really need to? Even if there is a bit of truth behind how Rose conducted himself in this tune, it was clear that this wasn’t the kind of song to listen to casually. This was a track that was intended to either piss you off the minute you heard it or give an outlet wastes of space who think that homophobia and racism is funny.

‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ – Nirvana

There are no standard rules for why people don’t return to some of their favourite songs. It can be easy for people to fall out of love with a track after playing it for hours on end, but it can also be because they aren’t as invested in the story as they used to be when they wrote it. A lot of Nirvana songs manage to fall under that umbrella, but their infamous cover of a Leadbelly classic wasn’t something that Kurt Cobain could ever pull off again.

The band had already started implementing an acoustic segment into their shows, but the minute they stepped into that MTV studio in 1993, Cobain left everything on tape when tearing through ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’. They had performed a handful of their tracks in this kind of setting before, but with every note, Cobain sounds more and more distraught until the final moment where he seems legitimately scared before bringing the song to a close.

Despite the audience wanting an encore, Cobain said that there was no chance that he was going to go back out there, saying that there was no way he could possibly top what he had just played. And considering the amount of wear and tear he must have done on his voice to get it to that point, it would have been a miracle if anyone else could have produced a note again for the rest of the night if they were in his shoes.

‘Tears in Heaven’ – Eric Clapton

By the end of the 1980s, Eric Clapton was showing signs of being pretty much bulletproof. He had hit a wall with his drinking, and while he was still on the road to recovery, he could perform better than anyone else in the world whenever his amp was turned up. He thought he had the blues before, but everyone’s entire world changes when they find out that they lost one of their children.

After his son, Connor, fell out of a window, ‘Slowhand’ couldn’t think of anything else other than throwing his grief into the song ‘Tears in Heaven’. While he knows that he doesn’t deserve to be in heaven for not being there for Connor, Clapton made the perfect song about channelling grief, at least learning to live with the fact that Connor is at peace even if he can’t ever see him again.

And while he bravely soldiered through many sets where he was on the verge of breaking down, Clapton eventually figured that he had had enough and officially retired the song from his concerts. But, really, can you blame him? This is up there with some of the saddest songs of all time, and even if someone can play it perfectly, anyone who can perform it and not feel something might be made of stone.