I’m sure this happens. You’re paid to play a piece of music you hate. How do you do it? Do you give 100%?
When I’m singing a piece that I dislike I still try to give it my all. There’s a paying audience sitting in front of us, and they’re entitled to that at the very least. And the presence of an audience usually creates its own energy so that even unpleasant pieces can seem more likeable in performance. A lot depends on the conductor. If he is enthusiastic it always rubs off on the performers. The problem arises, in my experience, when the conductor also dislikes the piece and is obviously disengaged throughout the performance.
[/quick aside]Have you ever heard the Beatles’ version of “How Do You Do It?” George’s solo has been likened to twanging on a slack rubber band. They detested that song but played it anyway. [/aside]
I react the same way. If the band director would call for a song I hated, I’d either fake playing it (F horn gets away with a lot) or drag the tempo. One of our fight songs during the quarters was “The Right Stuff” by NKOTB and you should have heard us suck the pep right out of that little ditty. It was the world’s only fight dirge by the time we were done with it. 
Yes, you give it 100%, or at least attempt to. In most cases, even if you hate it, you will be in a position to understand the style, the intentions of the songwriter/composer/etc., the aesthetic.
If I have to play a Haydn symphony, or anything by Delius (to take the two most recent examples 
), I will hate every minute of the rehearsals, to a bruxist extent, but (I think) I still manage to lock into the right mentality for the duration of a performance. However, I’m sure it will never sound as good as if someone of a similar standard, who adores the composer, was playing.
If you’re a pro, you play it 100%, making sure your performance differs not noticeably from your performance in music you like. Otherwise you risk losing your job or not being rehired or whatever. You certainly do not attempt musical sabotage or otherwise deliberately play worse to express your dislike.
If you’re an amateur, who knows. Hopefully you respect the institution giving you the opportunity to play enough to do your best.
If you’re playing Haydn, I know I want to listen!
Delius? That Florida Suite makes me change the channel.
As an amateur singer in my church choir, it depends. Not on my respect for the institution(while that may fluctuate it generally doesn’t do so on a weekly basis), but it depends on why I hate the song. Stupid lyrics, who cares. No melody line, I may mouth the words. Stupid lyrics, no melody line, and not even properly in my range, I just try to make it not obvious to the congregation that I’m not singing.
Of course, that applies mostly to “Praise Choruses” sung by the Worship Team, the Back Up Singers (AKA the choir) and the congregation.
If the song I detest is the Anthem, I may not give it my all, but I try much harder than if it is congregational singing.
I must admit that there was one Sunday when I played handbells and sang in church that I didn’t reappear in the choir loft until after the Praise Choruses had all been sung–and a lot of that was because I didn’t like them.
Comedy Musician Rob Paravonian has a great song about how much he hated hated hated playing, as a Cello player, Pachelbel’s Canon. He theorizes that Pachelbel (the “original one-hit wonder”) once dated a Cellist and “she dissed him really bad, so he retaliated by writing the worst Cello part ever.”
I can’t find anywhere online where you can listen to the whole song, but you can hear most of the opening monologue if you click on the song title “Pachelbel” on his CD Baby Sales Page. It’s a recording of a live performance, with audience laughter, so you really have to listen to catch everything he’s saying.
I have a friend that spent a long time playing drums for Jesse McCartney (depending on when she started puberty, she very well may be old enough to be his mother!). I had never heard of Jesse McCartney and she described him as a teen pop star.
I asked her if she could at least enjoy the music she was playing and she replied “Eh, there’s worse.” The parts were easy, the money was good and she agreed that playing in front of thousands of screaming teenagers was always fun. It’s possible that she would not have enjoyed playing with him in a small bar to a handful of disinterested patrons playing pool in the back, but add thousands of screaming teenagers and it was fun.
You find another piece, and if you can’t find another piece you try to find something to like about the one you hate, and if you can’t find something to like about it you grit your teeth, resist the impulse to tear the score in half, and play on. Pretty simple.
If you hated it because you couldn’t play it then I’d presume you’d play it badly.
Sometimes the dislike does derive from the difficulty of the piece. The buzz of an actual performance often allows you to conquer any difficulties. It’s amazing how much more likeable a piece becomes once one has mastered it.
From the late 80s until 2000, I played guitar in a cover band that specialized in wedding receptions. While there were many songs on our list which I liked, we had to do things like The Electric Slide and various Madonna tunes, songs I would normally avoid listening to. I was able to play these songs with enthusiam by concentrating on the pleasure of executing my part well with other good musicians, and remembering how grateful I needed to be for the opportunity to make good money playing with my friends. The Macarena was still agonizing.
As a guitar player, I always gave it everything I had, whether I disliked the song or not. There were many of them.
When it comes to singing, well, even if it was my favorite song, you’d certainly think I hated it after the first couple of bars.
On a related note, when you have mastered a piece you are free to hate it without the guilty suspicion that the only reason you might hate it is because you can’t play it.
As a singer in an amateur chamber choir - you give your all during a performance, but you complain, complain, complain in rehearsal.
That piece is a good example of a case where a piece is boring because it’s a very simple and repetitive part. One tactic to avoid suicidal tendencies is to use it as an opportunity to really concentrate on 100% technical accuracy. In the case of the cello in Pachelbel, this means things such as absolutely smooth bow changes, matching the phrasing of each repetition to the next, immaculate tuning, etc.
Hey, ya know any Skynard?
Yah, every cover band loathes Sweet Home Alabama, but ya gotta play because people get up and dance to it.
::holding lighter over my head::
Freebird!!!
I never played a whole lot of covers but I did end up playing stuff I didn’t really like from time to time, including my own stuff*. I usually would screw around with the piece enough that playing it didn’t suck but not so much that it changed the song completely. Most of the time no one noticed that I was playing it differently. I’d invert chords, add arpeggios and generally make my part more interesting to play. I got called on it a couple times but not very often. Every once in a while I’d have to play something that needed to be exact and my mind would wander. These days I don’t have to worry about that thankfully.
Slee
*Sometimes I write something and I realize at a later point that it sucks. I figure about 50% of what I write I end up trashing. In a band this could cause problems (What do you mean you don’t want to play that anymore???) so I usually sucked it up and kept playing the song. These days I figure that if I write a piece and I like it a month later it is probably a keeper.
As a player in a bar band, I’ve frequently found myself playing tunes I don’t really care for. Try as I might to give it my all, my performance will usually be somewhat lackluster. I strive to be technically proficient, and maybe find something in the piece that can provide at least a minimum amount of inspiration. Sometimes, the only inspiration is knowing that you’re getting a check at the end of the night.