To my knowledge, bards have never sung songs on live period. With the exception of Maestro, who casted, not sang his deadly lifetap. None of the classic bards did, that's for sure. Even during PoP, not as much as a peep from the bards I killed. They had really low HP, not so great resists, and usually only punched making them a tad less dangerous than similar level NPC. I loved kiting them on my druid, and later on my wizard twink because they were easy targets, and usually fast repop (due to the Going Postal quest) with the exception of Travis Two Tone, which was a 20 minute re-pop (There was a bard in the Barbarian village in West Karana, that made a good replacement, as well as the bard in Rivervale.)
NPC bards can't sing songs