# Top 5 Artists Who Hated Their Biggest Hits: The Who, R.E.M., The Turtles & More

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/professor-of-rock-7272370/top-5-artists-who-hated-their-biggest-hits-the-who-r-e-m-the-turtles-more
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/professor-of-rock-7272370/top-5-artists-who-hated-their-biggest-hits-the-who-r-e-m-the-turtles-more.md
Podcast: [Professor of Rock](https://stenobird.com/podcast/professor-of-rock-7272370)
Published: 2026-07-05T04:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://mgln.ai/e/345/pdrl.fm/eb47a0/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/1081cbf6-e298-4934-b552-908ee087ee24.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/345/pdrl.fm/eb47a0/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/1081cbf6-e298-4934-b552-908ee087ee24.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
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Duration seconds: 1828

## Resource

We All Love This Legend But He Wrote THE MOST IRRITATING Song of the 70s & Even He Admits It! For many artists and bands the song that makes you famous is the one that you wish you had never written. Some artists spend decades dodging their biggest hits, cringing every time they hear them on the radio and refusing to play them in concert. Today, I’ve got another Fiver for you. For this episode, we’re counting down the Top 5 artists who hated their own songs and the strange stories behind them. First… Pete Townsend dashed off Pinball Wizard in a blind panic… as a straight-up bribe to win over a single newspaper critic. He later called it an embarrassment, even as it climbed to the top of the charts in his home country. There’s also the cryptic frontman, Michael Stipe, who was mortified by his band's bubbliest hit: Shiny Happy People. He turned down a deal to make it one of the biggest TV theme songs of all time… His hatred for the song cost him a fortune. And finally, we’ve got the story of a guitarist who passed on a songwriting credit for The Turtles' Happy Together... which would have set him up for life and his kids and their kids. But he refused the writing credit, all because he thought it sounded too simple. Let’s get into it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

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