Let's face it, every performer has a bad show here and there.
Whether we're talking technical malfunctions, sudden illness, or just plain choking under
pressure, there are a myriad [MEER-ee-add] of ways things can go wrong in front of a
live audience.
But for the stars on this list, things didn't just go wrong, they went completely off the
rails.
These are the live performances that destroyed these artists' careers.
Ashlee Simpson
Using a backing track is common practice for live performers, but only if that track happens
to be for the song the artist is currently singing.
That was the hitch when Ashlee Simpson was ready to belt out "Autobiography" for the
second song of her 2004 SNL debut.
The track for "Pieces of Me" started playing instead.
What followed was an excruciatingly awkward moment which became her now-infamous "hoedown"
dance.
Regardless of why it really happened, Simpson's rising music career hit the skids almost immediately.
Simpson would release just one more album, 2008's Bittersweet World, which reportedly
suffered from both terrible sales and reviews.
Since then, she's been living low-key, except for a few sporadic acting gigs, getting married
twice, and raising her kids.
The Dixie Chicks
The Dixie Chicks made national headlines in 2003 when lead singer Natalie Maines sounded
off on her disapproval of the Iraq War during a show in London.
"Just so you know… we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."
The pushback from fans was so severe that The Dixie Chicks were essentially blacklisted
from almost every country radio station, and worse:
"This says Natalie Maines will be shot dead Sunday July 6th."
The group's next album, Taking the Long Way, debuted in 2006.
It received critical acclaim and even topped the charts, but the accompanying tour suffered
from "uneven attendance," according to Billboard.
It would take another ten years, and a complete toning down of Maines' once-unapologetic political
rhetoric for The Dixie Chicks to fully stage a comeback.
Having completed a successful nostalgia tour in 2017, which the band turned into a live
album, it seems the chicks may have finally left "the London incident" behind.
Robin Thicke
Robin Thicke's career was hotter than ever after "Blurred Lines" shot him to the top
of the charts in the summer of 2013.
But within months — following that questionable VMAs duet with Miley Cyrus — things quickly
unraveled.
According to Billboard, this period also coincided with the estrangement of Thicke's wife, actress
Paula Patton, for whom he then penned a hastily written and poorly received album in an attempt
to win her back.
"We were childhood sweethearts, so you know, she's the best person I ever met.
So I just thought the best --- the least, I could do would be to devote an album to
her."
It was two performances of songs from that album, Paula, that sealed Thicke's fate and
shuffled him to into the "has been" zone.
First up were the 2014 Billboard Music Awards when he debuted the song, "Get Her Back,"
with the on-the-nose line,
"I never should have raised my voice."
Then there were the BET Awards a month later where things went decidedly downhill.
Us Weekly described Thicke singing "Forever Love" as, quote, "looking tired and puffy
eyed," and sniffling his way through the performance.
In the three-and-a-half years since that teary-eyed misstep, Thick has barely made a blip on the
screen, although he did tell New York Upstate in January 2018 that he's working on a new
album.
Michelle Shocked
Rocker Michelle Shocked may not be a household name, but in the alt-folk scene she had quite
a following until she detonated it with an ill-conceived act of protest in March 2013.
Shocked interrupted her own gig at Yoshi's in San Francisco when she started citing anti-gay
Bible passages.
But the final blow for the singer, whose lyrics and audience were known to be liberally slanted,
was when she used a homophobic slur on stage,
"If someone would be so gracious to tweet out, 'Michelle Shocked just said from stage:
God hates f----ts.'"
The crowd revolted, and immediately left the show.
About a month later, and with many of her shows cancelled, Shocked appeared on Piers
Morgan and declared,
"No, I'm not homophobic."
This all translated to a long period of estrangement with her once-diehard fans.
Shocked confessed to Dallas News in 2017 that the evening at Yoshi's was an intentional
provocation meant to strike back at digital piracy of her music.
How exactly she meant to achieve that, we may never know.
The Sex Pistols
By the time legendary punk rockers The Sex Pistols took the stage at what would be their
last concert for nearly two decades, the writing was already on the wall.
According to The Telegraph, the band was on shaky ground due in part to bassist Sid Vicious'
debilitating heroin addiction, coupled with a poorly managed tour schedule that involved,
quote, "800-mile drives through bleakest midwinter."
On top of all that, lead singer Johnny Rotten had mentally checked out.
He said,
"By that last gig, I'd lost interest.
I'd become incapable of caring about writing another song for this outfit.
I felt like, 'That's it, there's the full stop.
I've achieved as much as I can in this environment.'"
That feeling was the inspiration behind Rotten's infamously bad performance during the band's
January 1978 show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
It was the final stop on the band's first, albeit brief, American tour, and it ended
on a one-song encore — of The Stooges' "No Fun."
As the tune concluded, Rotten famously asked,
"Ah, ha ha.
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
Goodnight."
Rotten subsequently quit the band.
The group did reunite for a tour in 1996 — sans Vicious, who overdosed on heroin and died
in 1979 — but it was just more of the same.
Guitarist Steve Jones told the New York Daily News,
"We did a hundred shows, made a bit of dough, but we wanted to off ourselves at the end.
We really don't make enough to put up with each other."
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