In addition to removing the songs from your iphone, using below, you can also remove/hide songs purchased in iTunes. This way they will not appear later as downloadable with the cloud icon on your iphone. Since having kids who like to listen to music on my phone, I had to get ride of the "Explicit" lyrics songs I accidentally purchased through iTunes in the past! This finally worked!!
If you are having problems removing a song, this is because it is linked to iCloud which affects purchased songs. This method is for deleting songs that you could not delete using the previous method.
1. In this example, I am deleting the song, “Ribs”, by Lorde. Swipe left at the song and hit delete.
You will notice the song is still there in the music library. At this point, swiping left at the song again will do nothing.
2. Go to Settings -> Music – > Show All Music – Make sure this option is turned on
3. Go to iTunes Stores -> Purchased and re-download the songs you wish to delete by pressing the cloud button.
4 Go back to Settings -> Music -> Show All Music – Disable this option now
5. Open the music player and locate the song. Swipe left to delete. This time it will actually get deleted.
Next, remove unwanted songs from iTunes. This way they will not appear later as downloadable with the cloud icon on your iphone
- Open iTunes.
- From the Library pop-up menu, choose Music.
- Click Songs in the navigation bar.
- Click the song you want to delete.
- Press Delete on your keyboard.
In iTunes 11 or later, the album cover art will remain visible, but a Download
icon will appear on it to allow you to download the item again (in countries that support this).
Note: If you didn't purchase a song from the iTunes Store, you can't download it again for free from iTunes in the Cloud. You might want to back it up somewhere on your computer.