These are songs that everybody–or maybe just you–liked at first but then got kinda overplayed to the point where everybody–and eventually you–started hating it.
Some that come to mind for starters:
Billy Don’t be a Hero - Bo Donalson and the Heywoods
The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
Stayin’ Alive - Bee Gees
Come Sail Away - Styx
This Beat Goes On/Swithchin’ to Glide - The Kings
Jack and Diane - John Cougar Mellencamp
Ooh! The Pina Colada Song by Rupert…Holmes?
I call this the Star Wars Theme Syndrome.
“I Will Always Love You”—Whitney Houston’s cover from the Bodyguard soundtrack. I thought it was really pretty for the first two or three weeks, but they played it so often and for so long that even now, ten or eleven years later, I can’t stand to hear it.
Free Bird, Stairway, Rhiannon, It Never Rains In Southern California.
Sure, you hated them twenty-or-so years ago. Having not heard them since, would you still hate them?
I caught the Kings at a club in Toronto some years back. Yep, they played “This Beat/Switchin’ to Glide.” And oddly enough, I was liking it. Same for a compilation CD that had “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero” on it. Sounds strange, but the song that I grew to hate in 1974 or so was kind of fun to listen to once more.
But not a lot of times more, as we once heard it on Top 40 AM radio. Just in small-to-moderate doses, at my discretion.
Now you’ve really done it. I’m going to have to go out and get Styx’s Grand Illusion CD
Joy to the World, though I didn’t much like that at the beginning. (The first time I heard it was when Three Dog Night performed it at the Grammys. Just to show how much music had advanced the next year, the Grammys had them perform it again.)
NO list like this is complete without the song that almost certainly destroyed Enya’s mainstream career, Only Time. More like only 50 million times. The worst part is that she was actually changing to a lighter, more cheerful style, and this colossal ball of sap is her follow-up megahit. Sheesh.
Also making the list!
Citizen King - Better Days: A quirky, funky alternative band that occasionally delved into straight-up bluesy pop. Guess what got played to death on Star 101.9.
Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On: Beautiful the first time. Still poignant the second and third times. Everything afterward’s firmly in “Make it stop!!” territory.
The Eagles - Hotel California: Aaagh. It was a weird time and they made up a word! Get over it!!
Len - Steal My Sunshine: I don’t care if there wasn’t a lot of material to choose from, playing this incomprehensible candy pop ad nauseum was unforgivable.
Aqua - Barbie Girl: Gill H. Raiden…EVERY song they ever did was like this! I really don’t want brand recognition to be a factor in what songs get constant airtime!
Village People - YMCA: Seriously, why the hell did they even bother recording another song?
Oh, so many choices. Just off the top of my head, Maroon 5’s “This Love” was catchy to me at first but now I change the station when it comes on the radio because I’m sick of it.
The Night the Lights went out in Georgia-proof that Vicki Lawrence had zero talent
Seasons in the Sun-awful then as now
Wedding Bell Blues-hide the sharps, please
Devil went down to Georgia-they should have shot him, too
Sloop John B-the Beach Boys true low point
Loving You-Phoebe Snow sounds like she’s caught in a leg hold trap
Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves-what tripe, even for Cher
There are more, but those ranked high on my BarfoMeter scale 
I hated it the first time I heard it: yes, we know you can sing across 5 octaves, there’s no need to prove it: And IIIIII-YEEEE-IIIIII! Will. All. Ways Love. YOUUUU-WOOOO-WOOOO-WOOOO!
As much as I loved my mom, she made me hate this song. Every damn time it was played anywhere she had to tell me it was the number 1 song the week I was born.
25 years and she didn’t realize I heard her the first time. :rolleyes:
And it’s such a sweet little song. Key word being LITTLE. Listen to Dolly Parton perform it in “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and you’ll see what I mean. Poignant. And then the Whitney-monster sank her claws into it and just wrecked it for everyone.
I recall hearing shortly after The Bodyguard came out that a woman in England was charged with a criminal offense for excessively playing the Whitney version. The court classified it as psychological warfare or something.
To the “liked it now hate it” list I add Geri Halliwell’s “Ride It.”
Spoons:
Well no. That’s kind of my secret point. Guilty pleasures and all.
And I sang “This Beat/Switchin’ to Glide” a couple years ago at a “live band karaoke” deal in Mpls a couple of years ago and was still getting compliments on my performance weeks later. (And The Grand Illusion is one of the best albums ever recorded IMO).
Anyway…
Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meat Loaf
Story songs are particularly ripe for backlash, beacuse you get involved with the characters when you first hear it, but then that involvement gets imposed on you again and again as it gets played repeatedly. “Cats in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin and “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey are a couple more examples.
But the most notorious backlash song ever just might be “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus.
I’ve gotta go with “All Star” by Smash Mouth.
When it first came out, I thought, “Hey, neat tune. Catchy melody. Funny lyrics and video.”
But now, after the billionth playing of the song and after hearing it featured in countless movies and commercials, I think “Please, please make it stop!!”
Stairway to Heaven and pretty much anything else on Led Zeppelin IV.
In fact, all the staples of “classic rock” radio. It took me a while to realize that I didn’t actually hate The Kinks, I just had had my fill of Lola.
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In fact, all the staples of “classic rock” radio.
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This is a really good point.
I used to love classic rock-- back in the mid-80s when no one was playing it on the radio and before “Classic Rock” radio stations had emerged. Now all of those great rock songs from the 60s and early 70s have been played to death, and I am sick of them all. (Well, most of them.)
Something related I just read(They ranked IV as the 7th best album of the 70s):
Check the list here.
There was a one-hit wonder band in the late '70’s that spawned a single which dominated the radio for months before everyone grew tired of it: **My Sharona ** by the Knack.
*Michael Jackson’s * Beat It. The parody by Weird Al Yankovich, Eat It, was much better!
Oh man, at the top of my list is “Shout” by Tears for Fears. But it was just coincidence: I lived in England for a while as a kid, and just before we left “Shout” had made its way up the U.K. charts and was on its way back down (i.e. it had been played on the radio a lot), and then just after we got back it started its journey up the U.S. charts. I think I heard that song every time I turned on the radio for, like, a year.