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Dead Horse Genre

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 A music genre that critics 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 Guilty Pleasures and they know 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 an Audience-Alienating Era.
Amateur critics on the Web aren't quite as dogmatic as the professionals, because the amateurs aren't part of an establishment that declares who is hot and who is not. But since anybody with an internet connection and library can be a critic, amateurs often have their own personal Dead Horse Genre, which they flog as hard as the professionals do with theirs.
Of course, a lot of these genres really are full of rubbish. But so are genres that the critics like — Sturgeon's Law strictly applies. If you're a fan of this stuff and you want reviews, you may have to go to a specialized web site that only covers that one genre.
So why kick a genre until it's a dead horse? Because critics regard what they do as Serious Business. They're trying to calculate the canon of Great Works here, and there's no room for anything less. They seem to think that if enough people consume good works, people will start giving out flowers and candy and overthrow The Man 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.)
Another reason for this is that entire genres have been created by taking a style the creators hate and then doing the exact opposite. Critics who like these rebel genres have to pan the ones they rebelled against. Maybe both genres have something to offer? Don't be silly! This is art, and there's only one way to do things.
Sometimes, a genre turns into a dead horse through a mix of Hype Backlash and It's Popular, Now It Sucks!; the work hit a peak level of popularity where it appears to be everywhere, and both the public and the critics get sick of it.
Most of these genres have one or two exceptions, the creators that the critics like in spite of it all. Of course, the critics usually spend their time trying to explain that no, these bands aren't really part of the hated genre at all— although it should be noted that in some cases this is more true than others.
For those people who haven't figured it out yet, most music criticism is very close to Fan Dumb and Hate Dumb. See also Sci Fi Ghetto.
Note that the list doesn't include very old nearly-forgotten genres like motet.
The Big List of Dead Horse Genres:
Arena Rock
There ain't no respect for 1970s bands who made songs specifically for arena spectacles, like Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. Critics regard them as pompous, fake, and not real music because their songs aren't really played — they're performed. Especially to fans of Three Chords and the Truth, this is unacceptable. And since arena rockers usually wrote straightforward lyrics, those who feel that True Art Is Angsty have nothing.
Arena rock is notable for being a Dead Horse Genre that also has a band that is usually loved or liked even by the people who hate the genre: Queen, who were a lot more willing to experiment and do odd things than most Arena Rock bands.
Hair Metal
A sub-type of heavy metal from the 1980s, bands like Poison, Bon Jovi, and Mötley Crüe inspire a lot of hate, even from people who love other kinds of heavy metal. Critics dismiss it as nothing but make-up, big hair, fancy costumes, and videos, with no room for actual music in there. (Wilson & Alroy, the first big amateur music reviewers on the web, refuse to review hair metal albums for any reason.) Among professional critics, hair metal had the misfortune of being too tied to the 1980s rock "establishment," especially MTV. 1990s Grunge music was a rebellion against hair metal, like Punk was a rebellion against Prog Rock, so when grunge became the critical darling of MTV, there was soon no place for hair metal among the pros.
Show Tunes
Rock critics don't usually like (or know much about) music that isn't rock, but they're wary of attacking genres that they know they don't understand. So they leave Classical, Blues, Jazz, and "World" alone. But Broadway show tunes don't have the mystique that makes those other genres so scary. If it was sung in a theater, rock critics dismiss it as sappy, soulless stuff for lame fifty-something white people in 1955. One of the stock funny anecdotes among music critics is that Marvin Gaye, the master of suave Motown love ballads with soul, originally wanted to sing show tunes.
Incidentally, musical theater fans have their own Dead Horse Genres: Jukebox Musicals, European pop operas such as the output of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Disney musicals, etc. The hate for those is similar to the hate others have for Manufactured Bands (see below).
Mainstream Radio
Albums by the likes of Fleetwood Mac or Eagles — which seem to consist of the same song repeated for seven tracks or more — send a shiver down the spine of many a critic. After all, it's produced by The Man, who is the root of all evil (but not that one); and it probably got played due to payola anyway. The fact that lots of people love it is only proof that it's bad — what do the proles know, anyway? Also currently applies to bands such as Nickelback which have the "sold 10 million albums but I don't know anyone who owns one" type of fanbase.
Manufactured Bands
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 The Monkees to *NSYNC and Britney Spears, 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 — most people aren't going to criticize Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra 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 "Milli Vanilli" around them.
The older bands suffer the same fate as hair metal — manufactured bands prospered most between Elvis getting drafted and The Beatles arriving, so they are seen as the horror which the Beatles saved music from. Speaking of "older", note that in recent years manufactured bands and their intended demographic are getting younger — Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers and The Naked Brothers Band are presumably marketed to kids whose parents think they're too young to go on the Internet. Interestingly, manufactured bands targeted toward girls get far, far, far more criticism than those targeted toward boys even if their music is of the exact same quality. Manufactured bands targeted at girls almost always acquire the Periphery Hatedom of their generation.
In Britain, much of the ire for manufactured bands is specifically directed at contestants from The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent who actually started music careers. While some manage to acquire mainstream acceptance, many are derided for appealing to the Lowest Common Denominator 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 "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 Simon Cowell).
As noted above, many critics generally don't hate manufactured artists as much as one would think. Britney Spears? Oops!... I Did It Again, Britney, In The Zone, Circus and Blackout have all averaged around three stars or more in reviews. The Monkees have also been somewhat Vindicated by History lately. Justin Bieber and The Jonas Brothers also don't receive, for the most part, overly negative reviews on their albums. Indifference moreso than dislike is probably the most common critical reaction. It also depends on what the "faces" themselves bring to the table. The Monkees fought for more creative control over their music from the start, succeeding from the album Headquarters onward. They began writing their own songs and Michael Nesmith has been recognized in particular as a talented songwriter and music video auteur. Britney Spears, on the other hand, is largely a figurehead for writers and producers and is nicknamed "One-take Jake" for her minimal studio time recording vocals (which are heavily processed).
Viewpoints about the Sex Pistols vary: they started as a band manufactured by Malcolm McLaren, but with the addition of John Lydon his influence over them was heavily diminished. Subsequently they initiated the first wave of British punk, with bands like The Clash and Buzzcocks citing them as the direct reason they formed. After Lydon left, McLaren tried to keep the band going, resulting in disasters such as The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.
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. Take That is a pretty good example.
Also, starting in The New '10s there is a small boy band resurgence in Britain (like One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, The Wanted, 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 Pussycat Dolls fell by the wayside.
Finally, outright parody bands such as Spinal Tap may get a bye on the basis that they were really attacking the sort of band they pretend to be.
In Asia, there appears to be somewhat less resistance in accepting Boy Bands/Girl Groups; groups like Big Bang and the Hello! Project still sell in Korea and Japan. It likely helps that they're generally willing to mock themselves relentlessly. Furthermore, J-Pop singers often have other people write and/or compose their songs (Yoko Kanno partnering with Maaya Sakamoto on numerous albums, for example). It's not really a negative, nor is it decried as "manufactured" (at least not over and above what American critics think of the dancy, peppy J-pop genre as it is).
Nu Metal
Nu Metal is an umbrella term coined in the mid-1990s to refer to music that blends heavy metal elements with other styles, typically Industrial and Alternative Metal. Nu Metal is hated by many metalheads, who stereotype it as commercial and musically simple. It's also hated by many non-metalheads, who view it as crass, misogynistic, and pointlessly obnoxious — a bunch of Jerk Jocks "stealing" the clothes of the weird kids (a sentiment ironically felt within nu metal itself later on). In fact, there are many that argue Nu Metal isn't even a subgenre of metal, but rather a fusion genre that happens to have noticeable elements of metal in it. Some music critics argue that it is an experimental and diverse genre, which it very well could have been if the more commercially viable elements hadn't been milked to death. The original concept lives on as Avant-Garde Metal to some degree, but outside of a few acts that either abandoned the more disliked aspects of the genre or simply got too big to die, the genre of nu metal itself is still largely viewed as a punchline for jokes about late-Nineties suburban excess. Despite this, the genre has had a noticeable increase in prominence with revival bands such as Vein, Issues and various other artists, although the genre is still largely disliked by critics as a rule.
As with arena rock above, a few bands did manage to escape the critical pasting associated with nu metal, such as Dir en grey and System of a Down (of course, there are plenty of people who'll insist neither act was ever a nu metal band). Again, this is likely due to their diverse, experimental sound.
Deathcore
Deathcore is a genre that was developed in the 2000s that combines the extreme technicality of Death Metal with the mosh pit-inducing energy of Hardcore Punk / Metalcore. The genre rose to popularity in 2006/2007 with bands such as Bring Me the Horizon and Suicide Silence. The genre at the time was considered a commercially viable form of Death Metal and was popular from 2006 to 2012. In spite of its commercial success, deathcore is often frowned upon by critics and metalheads alike. Many critics call the style "ugly", "disgusting" and other related names. Critics will often pan albums in this genre due to the practicing bands' inability to evolve the genre in any way, as many of the artists in the deathcore genre will copy a style from one of their peers, rinse-repeat. In fact, many people consider deathcore to be a "dirty word" in the heavy metal community and is often labelled as the Spiritual Successor to Nu Metal in terms of genres being The Scrappy of the heavy metal world. Funnily enough, deathcore artists will often cite Ensemble Dark Horse nu metal bands such as Korn or Deftones as stylistic influences even though the former genre is hardly influenced by the latter in any way.
As the years went on, many deathcore artists have abandoned their style in favor of other genres or have disbanded, with the currently existing deathcore artists being disowned by the heavy metal community. Nowadays, deathcore is considered a giant fad that was filled with emo teens who had throat tattoos and were known to kill themselves in motorcycle accidents.
Gangsta Rap
Many think the genre died in the late 90s (Dr. Dre himself thinks so as well). But this is somewhat contested because some (mostly horribly out-of-touch Moral Guardians) think it's still the popular hip hop genre. The problem with this is that a lot of hip hop that didn't fall into the indie, pop, or alternative banner was automatically placed under the gangsta rap umbrella term...unfairly or not. Usually by cynical alt/indie rap fans. Also the grittier type 1 variants are dead, while a glossier Lighter and Softer version exists in its place.
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