Nominees for the Done-To-Death award obviously vary greatly from locale to local and from genre to genre.

In Preservation Hall in New Orleans, a sign something like this is prominently displayed:

Requests:    $5
"The Saints" $100

I don't recall the exact dollar amounts, and the sign is so old that the (pre-inflationary) numbers might be lower than what I wrote -- but the message is clear: Puh-leeeze don't ask us to play "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," we're sick to death of it.

Less-than-knowledgeable tourists visiting a place closely identified with a certain musical tradition, of course, are going to ask for the few titles from within that tradition that they recognize (including things *erroneously* associated with that tradition). I'm sure that the same general trend that is true for traditional jazz in N.O. is true for Irish folk music in Dublin (or, for that matter, in Irish-themed pubs anywhere in the world), and for many other locally-identified genres and sub-genres around the world. (For example, I wonder whether there are players in Liverpool sick to death of doing Beatles tunes.)

For a song to become overdone and over-requested, it pretty much *has* to have been "good" to begin with -- appealing in some way to a fairly large public.

Also, musician/singers are likely to loose their taste in such a tune much sooner than the general public, whether in the role of performers of whom requests are being made, or simply as listeners among other less-sensitized audience members.