Sandbox / Dead Horse Genre Wick Check

The trope Dead Horse Genre is defined as a genre music critics hate on principle, but a lot of the actual use is applied to genres that people in general dislike (often, but not always, one that used to be popular) — likely due to the name's similarity to Dead Horse Trope.

Since the intended definition has quite a bit of overlap with Critic-Proof (a lot of the stuff critics hate at least sold well enough to get their attention), and it would be interesting to list genres that have fallen out of favour without falling victim to a specific Genre-Killer or being outright Condemned by History, I suggest reworking the page into the genre equivalent of Discredited Trope and removing the "music genres only" restriction.

Proposed solution:

1. Remove the "music genres only" restriction, rename to Discredited Genre and rework the page into the genre equivalent of Discredited Trope. Repurpose the "music genre hated by critics" analysis on the current page for Analysis.Critic Proof. Disambiguate the old name.
2. Cut and disambiguate. Allow Discredited Trope to list discredited genres.

A music genre disliked by critics specifically (8/50, 16%)

1. Creativity Leash: Music that critics automatically hate.
2. Progressive Rock: Critics, who usually believe in Three Chords and the Truth, have tended to hate the genre, even during its heyday in the early '70s. Today, they still hold prog up as the other reason '70s music sucked so much. This is probably influenced by Lester Bangs' and Robert Christgau's disdain for prog. The critical darlings of the first half of the '70s were Singer Songwriters like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Proto Punk bands like the New York Dolls and The Stooges, while critics went for Punk Rock, Post-Punk and New Wave Music in the second half. A prominent exception is Allmusic, which has given several famous prog albums the maximum rating of five stars, as is the Italian writer Piero Scaruffi, who ranks prog albums as two of his top three albums ever made (three of three if you count Beefheart as prog). Pitchfork has been known to give prog records good reviews on occasion as well ^note for example, it gave a 9/10 rating to Yes' Close to the Edge, a 9.4/10 rating to Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - which might have been a 10/10 if they had perceived the reissue to be of higher quality - and a 10/10 rating to Pink Floyd's Animals, but on the whole it much more frequently lambastes them. And, for that matter, even Christgau has given good reviews to prog records on occasion (Henry Cow, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, etc.). Other than that, the only positive press coverage prog artists usually get is in magazines catering to musicians. Despite this, and no doubt precisely because of its appeal to musicians, the genre still has a number of Spiritual Successors and other lasting influences on modern music; see below.
3. Funny.Todd In The Shadows 2016 Episodes: In an otherwise vaguely positive review, Todd gets annoyed by the fact that the version that got famous is a remix, and wants to hear the original... which he immediately and passionately hates (due to it being a White Guy With Acoustic Guitar Song), to the point of pulling a knife on it. This is a pet peeve of music critic Todd in the Shadows, but there's no context on how critics in general feel about it
4. GenreKiller.Music (2): Shoegazing is a rare example — an album so good it killed its own genre for quite some time. My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album Loveless is widely believed to have turned shoegazing into a Dead Horse Genre nonetheless, with almost every other band in the scene receiving a hostile critical reaction for trying to sound like My Bloody Valentine. The fact that My Bloody Valentine's third album, MBV, was 21 years in the making didn't help at all; the scene was soon supplanted by Britpop. This ended up derailing more than a few careers (Slowdive was notably plagued by this; Souvlaki is now often mentioned in the same breath as Loveless and sometimes even considered to be better). Fortunately, it wasn't permanent — interest in shoegazing came back in the 2000s and 2010s.
5. Music.Armin Van Buuren: Precision F-Strike: At one interview, he actually tells the journalists that called trance a Dead Horse Genre to "go fuck themselves".
6. YMMV.Brutal Legend: Given that this is a game about Metal, there's sure to be plenty of ribbing of unpopular music styles - such as the Hair Metal-themed villain group (despite the fact there are multiple hair metal songs on the soundtrack). Subverted because this is a game set in a world without critics to badmouth any specific genre. Any Metal in this game, that is not said to be awful in game, is an affectionate nod to its genre. Rob Halford even said, "[Lionwhyte] is a cross-section of everything I know and love in Heavy Metal music.".
7. YMMV.King Crimson: Seems to be averted, since even some normally prog-averse critics such as Robert Christgau have praised some of their albums (e.g., Red). Alongside Pink Floyd, they seem to be one of the few prog bands that even prog-skeptic listeners will admit to liking.
8. YMMV.Pink Floyd: Critical Backlash: They triggered a big one at the height of their career. NME was the biggest culprit, with a notoriously scathing concert review from the mid-1970's. For the most popular band performing a major Dead Horse Genre, it seems inevitable that critics would run them through a wood chipper and would be not pleased that the '80s began with a Progressive Rock band at #1.

A music genre that used to be popular, but has fallen out of favour (12/50, 24%)

1. AudienceAlienatingEra.Music: Who knew that KISS, the hottest band in the world, could be so plagued by a long history of bad career decisions?
   • It's often ignored that KISS was pretty obscure in their first year or so. Glam rock was on its way out in the United States by 1974 (even Alice Cooper was moving away from it), and KISS's debut album was more popular in Japan than in the US. They only broke out with Dressed to Kill, the point where they refined the live theatrics they've become so famous for.
2. FanonDiscontinuity.Music:
   • Sometimes, it's easy to ignore music from the favourite artist of a fandom that they perceive end up sucking. If this happens to an entire genre of music, it becomes a Dead Horse Genre.
   • A number of KISS fans prefer to pretend there was never a time when the band performed without the makeup. Another group would like to throw the disco album in there as well.
3. Genre-Killer.Music:
   • In fact, the gradual "decline" of rock music in general from the mainstream consciousness between the mid-'90s and the early '10s can't really be attributed to a single factor or album, but rather, to a series of complex circumstances and societal changes, enough to potentially fill an entire book and far too complex in size and scope for this wiki alone to effectively cover. A good comparison might be the disappearance of jazz from the mainstream. It did not die overnight like disco, nor was it the last stand of classical music in the mainstream. Rather, its decline unfolded over several decades in the latter half of the 20th century that saw its image go from "hip dance music" to "elitist, old-fashioned museum piece". Ironically, rock played a key role in jazz's decline by seizing its mantle as the music of the young, with critics noting as early as The '60s that jazz was no longer as cool as it used to be. The silver lining was that moving out of the mainstream allowed jazz to escape the creative stagnation that had resulted from being there, and some commentators are speculating that the same may happen to rock.
   • What few will argue is that grunge gave a single unified image to the growing backlash, as while it didn't single-handedly kill the genre as most people believe, it was the last nail in the coffin for what was already becoming a Dead Horse Genre. As a result, since hair metal was the dominant genre of metal music in the mainstream rock scene, metal as a whole faded from the limelight for much of The '90s. While some genres avoided this, the general rule was that as long as you paid due reverence to '80s Alternative Rock (The Smiths, R.E.M.) and Hardcore Punk (Minor Threat, Black Flag) or played something abrasive and unquestionably anti-mainstream, it was okay to play metal in The '90s.
4. Fridge.TV Tropes: When you read the trope Dead Horse Genre, you come to the realization that: a.) practically anything and everything that ever got a lick of success anywhere in the world gets to be a DHG eventually; b.) a lot of the styles mentioned as a DHG were competing against each other in the same pop culture space, and maybe were even conceived as an antidote or antithesis to another popular style; c.) if they were popular once, they may well become popular again with at least somebody, at least if given a new lease on life, and d.) because the styles did become popular to the point of overkill, Hype Backlash and a certain amount of Fan Dumb will always be a factor in the perception of those styles of music. The critics and tastemakers who declared them "dead" often were ascended fans, after all, perhaps overreacting to a style's overexposure, not necessarily fans of the style (or fans of a different style) to begin with, and/or whining about the amount of below-average examples that inevitably rears its head as more and more people adopt that genre.
5. SeriousBusiness.Music: Music genres. People will argue to death trying to define a genre or deciding whether or not a piece of music falls under this razor-thin subgenre or that one. Notable examples include: [irrelevant examples removed]
   • "What is REAL rap music?" Almost anything made after 1999 is seen as popcorn trash. On the opposite side, anything before 1999 is played-out and passe. The turning point was the time when "Gangsta rap", Alternative Rap, Political Rap, Hardcore Hip-Hop and associated genres lost popularity among casual rap listeners, causing a rift in those that followed new genres and those that preferred the old.
6. ToddInTheShadows.Tropes D To F:
   • One of his biggest problems with the remake of "We Are The World" is that the "Mega Crossover for charity" genre has passed the point of parody. He also points out that many of the contributors had already spoofed the genre, with emphasis on Josh Groban.
   • He also considers club anthems to be heading in this direction. When LMFAO used a Zombie Apocalypse theme in one of their videos, he claimed a zombie was a perfect analogy for the genre; technically dead, but still moving.
7. YMMV.Aretha Franklin: Old Shame: She felt this way about her 1979 disco album, La Diva. Looking back on it, she saw it as a desperate, rushed attempt to cash in on a rapidly dying Dead Horse Genre. It probably doesn't help that it was a critical and commercial flop.
8. YMMV.At The Gates: Vindicated by History: As with Once Original, Now Common; the huge influence of Slaughter of the Soul towards the melodic metalcore subgenre, coupled with the fact that Metalcore itself has become a Dead Horse Genre leads to Slaughter becoming a significant album in heavy metal history. It is now seen as one of the four highly-influential Melodic Death Metal albums along with Heartwork, The Gallery, and The Jester Race.
9. YMMV.Mayday Parade: While they aren't against the whole Emo label, Derek Sanders describes them as Pop-Rock. Seems to be a reference to the Emo genre falling out of favour.
10. YMMV.Motley Crue: Glam, of course. Their resurgence in the Turn of the Millennium says maybe not so.
    • In a 1989 (!) interview with MTV that would be later used in the special "It Came from the 80s II: Metal Goes Pop", Nikki Sixx hangs a lampshade on the glut of copycat glam rock bands at the moment, and infers that this was the same type of "dinosaur music mentality that punk rebelled against in the '70s". He goes on to say that somebody has to do something original. Guess who followed in the Answer Cut in said special? The band responsible for the genre's eventual demise, Nirvana.
11. YMMV.Shelby Flint: The popularity of disco music was already dwindling at a breakneck pace by the time Shelby recorded her late '70s disco/funk album with Ian Jack.
12. YMMV.We Are The World: As noted by internet reviewer Todd in the Shadows, the "charity single" genre has been parodied to death, which makes the selection of celebrities for the updated version (particularly Josh Groban, who has appeared in parodies of the format) rather amusing.

Disliked music genres in general (12/50, 24%)

Note that some of these may simply have failed to bring up the "hated by critics specifically" or "used to be popular, but is now disliked" aspect.

1. Audience-Alienating Era: See also Fanon Discontinuity, Canon Discontinuity, Running the Asylum, Early-Installment Weirdness, Dead Horse Genre (for the musical era equivalent)
2. Fan Hater: Dead Horse Genre, in which they hate on people for liking what they deem inferior brands of music.
3. Ghetto Index: Music genres that are hated in and of themselves.
4. Italo Disco: Its popularity had waned by the start of The '90s due to Italo house, Eurobeat, and Italo-dance taking its place. As Italo-disco is considered by fans to be highly associated with the preceding decade, there are less than a handful songs in The Nineties that are widely known as examples of Italo-disco, notably the 1990 Susanne Meals song "Forever" (a cover of another Italo song by Bryan Rich). From the turn of the millenium onward the genre amassed a gradually expanding fanbase aside from established sizable ones in eastern Europe, Spain and Latin America.
5. Periphery Hatedom: Many music examples overlap with Dead Horse Genre.
6. Archive.Ad Of Win Archive 2010: TheAmazingIowan: Dead Horse Genre shows up with an ad for "Now That's What I Call Music 36", featuring Katy Perry, Usher, Taio Cruz, Neon Trees, Nelly, & More! I think we know what the Ad Server thinks of modern pop...
7. GenreMotif.Showtunes: As a Dead Horse Genre, it's almost never shown in a positive light outside of its own context.
8. JustForFun.Trope Name Injokes: Example from a Dead Horse Genre, complete with random complaining.
9. YMMV.Home Page: A music genre that people mock/hate on. YMMV as there will be someone out there who likes it.
10. YMMV.Josh Groban: Has done a Christmas album. Ironically, it's his best-selling. Vaguely hints that Christmas music is disliked
11. YMMV.Over Clocked Remix: Besides Re Mixes with lyrics, most dubstep, rap, and metal Re Mixes also commonly receive backlash. Dubstep might have fallen out of favour as a whole, but the backlash against rap and metal remixes seems limited to this community.
12. WebVideo.Crash Thompson: Invoked by name at the start of Top 10 Best Nu-Metal Bands.
    "And you know, there's no better way to get back to basics than to do... what pretty much every internet reviewer is known for doing."
    *Beat*
    "BEATING A DEAD HORSE! HOLY FUCK, DID NU-METAL SUCK ASS!"

Zero-Context Examples and other undeterminable examples (8/50, 16%)

1. Genres: ZCE. Or... zero-context index entry?
2. New Sound Album: The Byrds started out as a folk-rock group, but once it neared being a Dead Horse Genre they moved to psychedelic pop-rock with Fifth Dimension. They later shifted to traditionalist country rock with Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
3. Nu Metal: Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
   • A select few bands, particularly outliers such as Deftones and System of a Down, among others, are well-respected by critics, some of which argue that they were never a part of the genre to begin with. In other countries, where the prejudice never existed, bands are proud to claim they were influenced by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and other Nu Metal bands. A few bands have been saved by leaving the nu metal scene and shifting to more technical music styles. The genre itself has received this somewhat in the '10s, where a more real and authentic style of nu metal emerged and has gained ground, avoiding the mistakes that killed it in the first place and becoming a recognized genre in it's own right (though still not without detractors).
   • The fact that it became a Dead Horse Genre in the first place might be the reason why modern nu metal bands don't face nearly as much persecution from listeners as bands who played to the nu metal trend back during its peak. Bands like Issues, In This Moment, Emmure, Of Mice & Men, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Islander, Hacktivist, and the like are exploring genre by its own merits, rather than trying to cash in on a trend or being pressured by their labels to make them money off of a phenomenon. Since nu metal currently isn't an "in" trend, these bands are playing the genre (or at least integrating elements of it) because they genuinely like it, not just for a paycheck. They're aren't completely free from persecution, but people who dislike the bands have little to-do with the fact that it's nu metal.
4. Public Medium Ignorance: ZCE. Or... zero-context index entry?
5. Vaporwave: Some believe that vaporwave was very close to becoming this in 2013 before various albums released in the following years offered new takes on the genre and revitalized it. Others believe it already has.
   • Vaporwave's influence eventually seeped into Future Funk, a dance genre that's functionally identical to the filter house and nu-disco of The Aughts, but with the added aesthetics and sample sets of vaporwave.
6. Music.Princes Associates: Mazarati later moved away from Prince, signed with Motown Records and recorded another album, the New Jack Swing-styled Mazarati 2, before breaking up. New Jack Swing is a former member of CondemnedByHistory.Music that was removed during a cleanup — it was deemed to suffer from Hype Backlash. Regardless, I'll list this as unclassifiable because the mention itself has no additional context.
7. YMMV.Magma: A potential criticism of the band. Then again, Johnny Rotten is a fan...
8. YMMV.Motown: The trope page suggests that Motown is the exception to this trope in the manufactured bands category, but there are probably more than a few listeners or critics who dislike the formulaic, factory-like Motown production process. This was certainly the case in The '70s, when many rock and funk musicians placed their music in opposition to what they often derided as "Toytown". Seems to be about general people disliking manufactured bands? Probably a better fit for Critic-Proof.

Non-music examples (5/50, 10%)

1. Soap Opera: Although soaps originated in the U.S., the genre there has undergone a severe decline to the point that media analysts have declared it effectively dead.
2. Trivia.Days Gone: Sleeper Hit: Days Gone was released to reception best described as So Okay, It's Average, with many critics not enthused by yet another open-world zombie survival game, and it saw itself releasing between big hitters from acclaimed developers or established IPs such as Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, on top of the aforementioned World War Z (2019) and being a PS4-exclusive. In spite of all that, Days Gone sold extremely well and ended up as the console's sixth-best selling exclusive in the United States as of early 2020.
3. YMMV.Vampire Reviews: And You Thought It Would Fail: Elisa mentioned it was a pretty risky move to do nothing but vampire fiction with the Dead Horse Genre feeling about them following Twilight and its fandom backlash.
4. NetworkDecay.Notable Aversions: Technically cable music channels (the ones that just air audio and display the track and artist information) like DMX, Music Choice and MTV's Urge package aren't really television channels, but beyond throwing out the occasional fad or Dead Horse Genre format (what's Toni Basil's "Mickey" doing in the rotation of Music Choice's Classic Alternative station? A throwback to when it was the New Wave channel), these channels are designed to purposefully not decay based on format division between each channel (you're never going to find Lady Gaga playing on the Oldies channel, for instance). Not about music genres
5. YMMV.Pinball: First, it was because video games were cheaper to maintain and took up less space at arcades. Later, as arcades died out, pinball machines all but disappeared. Of all the major pinball machine manufacturers such as Gottlieb, Bally, Williams, etc., only Stern Pinball remains today.
   • It could be argued that pinball has more of a Popularity Polynomial, as it is staging what appears to be somewhat of a revival in the last few years. Second-hand machine prices have surged. As an example, the value of Medieval Madness has gone from about $4,000-$5,000 in 2007 to over $7,000 in 2012. And as of 2013, a new pinball manufacturer, Jersey Jack Pinball, has sprouted up and released their first pinball, based on The Wizard of Oz. Argues against itself. Is also a weird example because it claims that pinball simply fell out of favor because video games were easier to handle and arcades died — not because people soured on pinball

Other (5/50, 10%)

1. BrokenBase.Music: Speaking of gangster rap, there's a debate going on about whether or not the genre is dead. Fans of the first wave of gangsta rappers (the anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, and politically conscious era) felt that it died along time ago. Other, more cynical hip-hop fans (usually indie/alt-rap fans) feels that the current rap is no different from the earlier form, despite the fact that its more Lighter and Softer. Here, the question of "is the Gangsta Rap genre dead?" seems to be "is a substantial amount of new Gangsta Rap works still being produced, or are the modern ones so much Lighter and Softer that they don't count?"
2. Creator Killer.Music: You can tell the creativity had dried up for the Dead Kennedys with their final album, 1986's Bedtime for Democracy. The band had just survived a bitter obscenity trial for including a poster of H. R. Giger's Penis Landscape with their previous album, 1985's Frankenchrist, one that left frontman Jello Biafra's label Alternative Tentacles nearly bankrupt, and going into their next album Bedtime for Democracy, they were drained. Even the band themselves seem to realize it, the song "Chickenshit Conformist" serving up a blistering damnation of a dried-up punk scene and, in hindsight, almost a prediction that the Kennedys didn't have long left. Biafra would soon split away from the band and start his own collaboration projects and spoken word albums. Seems to think punk is dead because people largely stopped making it
3. Music.Dwight Yoakam: He began his career in Nashville, Tennessee (what else would you expect?) in 1984, struggling at first since Honky Tonk was considered a Dead Horse Genre. '''Not sure if "Honky Tonk is disliked", "Honky Tonk used to be popular and faced backlash later" or "Honky Tonk is a dead genre with no new works being released, which led to this Honky Tonk artist struggling to find an audience"
4. PopularityPolynomial.Music: One Electronic Music genre that has benefited from the polynomial is Trance. The genre (one known for its more emotional and melodic compositions compared to other electronic genres) began in the early 90s, and grew to popularity within the European club and party scene through the decade, eventually splintering off to several different subgenres. Trance continued to maintain a very dedicated fandom that gradually grew more and more through the '00s all over the world, and while it did grow a fanbase stateside, it was harshly written off by house, Drum and Bass and techno fans as being cheesy and sappy, with numerous think-piece articles proclaiming trance had become a Dead Horse Genre. Not helping matters was the massive Broken Base and countless arguments between fans over what was "true" trance. Then The New '10s came in and an EDM explosion took over America, and although trance wasn't quite as popular as Electro House, Trap Music, or dubstep, it still did benefit greatly from the boom, with several DJs experiencing a major surge of new fans. The immediate selling-out of tickets for Insomniac's Dreamstate festival (which primarily featured smaller-name producers in its lineup) became the topic of discussion as the genre making a major comeback. A weird example that blames a Periphery Hatedom for the genre's temporary downfall
5. YMMV.The77s: Dead Horse Genre: At Lost Dogs shows, Terry Taylor and Gene Eugene were fond of making fun of Roe for his other band's "boogie woogie music." Seems to be a misplaced In-Universe example, but regardless it's hard to tell what folder the "boogie woogie music" would belong to.