History Main / DeadHorseGenre

In the words of Music/{{Pink}} (whose first album was R&B) ''"Nobody wants to hear a love song that you don't mean"''. Not just the genre itself but arguably the love and romance of Contemporary R&B is dead. Replaced by songs dealing with trashy soap opera, Jerry Springer topics. With more vocal gymnastics and some vague, treacly high-pitched sound in the background. The fusion of modern R&B to hip-hop tends to dilute both these Genres. Interestingly enough, Contemporary R&B pushed soul music off the charts.

Some say Neo-Soul is dead. Considering in the early 2000s it was getting A LOT of mainstream buzz (mostly because of Music/AliciaKeys). With singers like Maxwell, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Music/JillScott, Angie Stone, Lina, India.Arie, Music Soulchild Et Cetera. But by the mid-2000s, interest faded away.

* The alternate interpretation on how gangsta rap died is that it suffered from biased [[LighterAndSofter censorship and homogenization]]. Turning it into GlamRap.

Also, starting in TheNewTens there is a small boy band resurgence in Britain (like Music/OneDirection, Music/FiveSecondsOfSummer, Music/TheWanted, and Music/TheVamps; although the former two would eventually blow up internationally) but girl groups are still out of the question as groups like Girlicious and Music/PussycatDolls fell by the wayside.

Some critics who live through the DiscoSucks era may admit to liking a few disco acts -- Music/TheBeeGees, Music/DonnaSummer, Music/{{ABBA}}, Music/{{Blondie}}, and Music/{{Chic}} still maintain good critical reputations. Of course, some of these acts long predated disco and many didn't perform the style exclusively. Those who didn't or weren't born tend to be more open about liking the genre and modern acts like Music/DaftPunk. It was also a fairly major influence on early hip-hop and was also one of the more prominent genres in the musical potpourri that was post-punk and New Wave.

As in Mainstream Radio above, these bands are often accused of being repetitive and banal -- if not outright bashed, there's a good chance that they'll be described as "middle-of-the-road, comfort food rock". These bands tend to fall in the "[[CriticProof sold millions of albums but nobody seems to actually like them]]" trap. It's also unpopular among fans of the original grunge bands, who see it as a watered-down, mainstream-baiting response to an "authentic" rock movement. The genre died out in TheNewTens, with the few bands that didn't sing about SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll [[NewSoundAlbum adopting elements of other genres]] in order to keep their chart success alive. Most of the bands who refused to change their sound have invariably been CondemnedByHistory.

An interesting subsect of this would be {{vaporwave}} -- no relation to VaporWare -- a music which functions as a both a parody and SpiritualSuccessor "Easy Listening" music. It became subject to MemeticMutation in the early 2010's but fell out as the meme became [[DiscreditedMeme discredited]] later. Today, the genre has [[Popularity Polynomial experiences a revival]] of sorts, mainly thanks to it's offshoots like Future Funk and the various "core" music genre. And still has a thriving, if somewhat niche.

Probably more of a target for amateur critics than professionals, this genre is also the one that most non-critics who start getting interested in music will hate the most. From Fabian and Music/TheMonkees to Music/{{NSYNC}} and Music/BritneySpears, performers who serve as faces for a faceless team of composers are viewed as outright traitors to music. They are the monster, the roots of the evil corporate machine that suppresses true music. They perform catchy but empty pop designed to hypnotize teenagers into becoming shopping-obsessed zombies. They... well, you know the drill. The average critic cares a lot about sincerity, so singers who only sing (instead of writing their own material) are unacceptable (depending on how long ago the artist came to prominence -- no one's criticizing Music/NatKingCole or Music/FrankSinatra for not writing their own tunes...). Professional critics have to (publicly) give 'equal time' to modern manufactured bands for obvious reasons, but are free to trash selected out-of-date whipping boys (like the Monkees) with gusto. And don't even mention the words "Music/MilliVanilli" around them.

Some critics may admit to liking a few disco acts -- Music/TheBeeGees, Music/DonnaSummer, Music/{{ABBA}}, Music/{{Blondie}}, and Music/{{Chic}} still maintain good critical reputations. Of course, some of these acts long predated disco and others didn't perform the style exclusively. It was also a fairly major influence on early hip-hop and was also one of the more prominent genres in the musical potpourri that was post-punk and New Wave.

An interesting subsect of this would be {{vaporwave}} -- no relation to VaporWare -- a music which sounds like stereotypical "Easy Listening" music. It became subject to MemeticMutation for a few months in 2014 but fell out as the meme became [[DiscreditedMeme discredited]]. It still has some fans, but for the most part, died as fast as it came.

Similar to the criticisms of ArenaRock: these bands offend critical sensibilities, which tend sharply toward ThreeChordsAndTheTruth. Not only do they do [[EpicRocking extremely long songs]], they tend to write [[WordSaladLyrics incomprehensible lyrics]] to go with them.

Music performed by hippies as a primary component of the counterculture movement (think the gentle guitar and ukelele songs of UsefulNotes/CharlesManson) is largely considered tepid, boring, and hypocritical. Largely, the type of folk music done by hippies has long been seen as dated and "lame" even for the time, even by people who enjoy '60s music.

Back in the '70s, most animes had their own catchy theme songs. However, during the '80s, it was slowly phased out for J-pop or J-Rock tracks which are easy to license and seem more normal for listening. Good luck finding a theme song for anything past kids' shows nowadays. Even Franchise/KamenRider is a bit more unconventional with its newer openings and end theme songs than, say, Franchise/SuperSentai. This was heavily lampshaded in ''LightNovel/{{Kampfer}}'' as Kaede speaks of anime openings being normal compared to say cartoon openings. Helps that thanks to increasing deals and connections between studios, networks, and production groups -- the songs are now commonly used as a way to help sell that particular artist just as much as the show itself.

In some cases, if a manufactured band breaks up then regroups a few years later when they're a bit older and wiser, there's sometimes a good chance that they will manage to win the favour of critics and the public. Music/TakeThatBand is a pretty good example.

After floating around in the outer reaches of the record industry for decades, the success of African-American musical genres like jazz, blues, soul, and funk in the 1960s finally brought it to the forefront by the beginning of the 1970s. However, many objected to the glitzy, [[FlamboyantGay camped-out]] commercialism, claiming it "sucked all of the soul" out of the music. Disco came under a backlash from two sides -- white rock fans despised the genre due to its [[WolverinePublicity ubiquity]] and perceived threat to RockAndRoll's dominance, while black {{Funk}} fans trashed the genre as soulless, vapid, and stupid, angry over how it pushed their heroes (Music/JamesBrown, Music/GeorgeClinton, et al.) and hard-edged funk out of the charts. When the hammer fell on the genre, it fell ''hard'', and [[CondemnedByHistory practically no one will now admit]] to having come within a billion miles of it at its height. "X was into disco in the '70s" jokes are practically a staple of the SitCom genre. It tried to resurrect itself in disguise as '80s High-Energy, but could not reclaim its once-lofty position. Notably, although it can't retake the position it once held, time has helped to soften the once incredibly harsh attitudes towards the genre; especially with a growing set of generations that have since come up without all the vitriol aimed at it. This has allowed certain elements of Disco music to come back with a modern flair in a better fashion than its prior 80s resurrection attempt.

In Britain, much of the ire for manufactured bands is specifically directed at contestants from ''Series/TheXFactor'' or ''Series/BritainsGotTalent'' who actually started music careers. While some manage to acquire mainstream acceptance, many are derided for appealing to the LowestCommonDenominator and existing solely to "steal" the Christmas Number One single spot with a cover version to validate the existence of the programme (with the back cover of several ''Pop Stars: The Rivals'' VHS tapes actually implying that the Christmas number one was the prize for winning the programme). The backlash against this seems to have culminated with the successful 2009 Facebook campaign to put "[[Music/RageAgainstTheMachine Killing In the Name]]" at the top of the Christmas singles chart. Generally, the ire isn't ''really'' directed at the singers themselves -- evidenced by the success of Leona Lewis and the praise for [=JLS=] attempting to be original with their material -- but at the system which got them into the position (and [[MeanBrit Simon Cowell]]).

There ain't no respect for 1970s bands who made songs specifically for arena spectacles, like Music/{{Foreigner}} and Music/REOSpeedwagon. Critics regard them as pompous, fake, and not real music because their songs aren't really played -- they're performed. Especially to fans of ThreeChordsAndTheTruth, this is unacceptable. And since arena rockers usually wrote straightforward lyrics, those who feel that TrueArtIsAngsty have nothing.

So why kick a genre until it's a dead horse? Because critics regard what they do as SeriousBusiness. They're trying to calculate the canon of Great Works here, and there's no room for anything less. They seem to think that [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans if enough people consume good works]], people will start giving out flowers and candy and overthrow TheMan and cure cancer, but if they consume bad works, people will have their souls crushed and vote to establish fascism. Some music critics with strong political beliefs go further -- some are still angry that the decline of music in the late 60s prevented the revolution that was so, so close at hand! (They seem to forget, or never even realized, that so many of these works were brought to us by - and perhaps never would have been without - corporate entities.)

A music genre that critics [[{{Hatedom}} hate on principle]]. If a work or creator is from one of the forbidden genres, it is automatically bad, no matter what the creator or work makes. A critic who actually likes any of this stuff has to bend over backward, apologizing that these works are GuiltyPleasures and they know [[FanHater they shouldn't like the stuff]]. Some critics seem unable to write a review of works they like without an obligatory kick to the dead horse -- "this is so much better than that other crap!" Times when these genres were popular are declared to be the DorkAge.

The complaint here is that a single guy or girl on a guitar or piano is, in essence, the simplest setup you can possibly have, bar a single singer singing acapella. While useful for demos, and songs that require that kind of simplicity (for example, a song clearly intended to show off the singer's raw singing ability), most songs using such a minimal setup do nothing to "earn" the usage of such minimalism, and instead convey the feeling that the artist only put in the bare minimum amount of effort necessary to release the song.

During the heyday of Smooth Jazz as a radio format in the 1990s, it was reviled as the modern version of the Easy Listening or "Beautiful Music" format, despite incorporating R&B and soft soul vocals from Music/AnitaBaker, Music/{{Sade}}, Music/LutherVandross and Music/MariahCarey rather than traditional "middle of the road" artists like Barry Manilow. In the 2020s, like Easy Listening, it's more or less dead as a radio format due to the aging of the genre's core listener group and advertisers' unwillingness to reach those audiences, despite a few stations gamely hanging on in places like Atlanta, Georgia.

This is mostly a case of an album being released that was so good -- namely Music/MyBloodyValentine's ''Loveless'' -- that no other shoegaze act could possibly hope to live up to it, so critics took to panning the overwhelming number of shoegaze records that were released after that point just on principle. It doesn't help that My Bloody Valentine themselves took ''twenty-two years'' to release the record's follow-up. In TheNoughties the genre did undergo something of a revival, but most of the acts are still negatively compared to MBV.

Also, starting in TheNewTens there is a small boy band resurgence in Britain (like Music/OneDirection, Music/FiveSecondsOfSummer, Music/TheWanted, and The Vamps; although the former two would eventually blow up internationally) but girl groups are still out of the question as groups like Girlicious and Music/PussycatDolls fell by the wayside.