Top 10 Worst Music Genres

The Top Ten
1 Country

It’s truly a shame. When I was 19, I worked in a retro record store in a small rural town. The owner acquired a multitude of country rock records from the 1970s and 80s, right around the time one of the most respected artists in the country rock scene, Firefall, performed live at a park. A few of the group's members were also from my town. When I attended the concert, I was quite surprised. It was better than most of the mainstream country available nowadays.

They presented tight harmonies and guitar melodies, enhanced by some congas/timbales for extra punch. Their style resembled more of a country/soft rock blend, if you know what I mean, very underrated. I wish many country artists would depart from corporate labels, enabling more freedom and creativity within the genre, much like what a lot of independent labels promote.

2 Rap

Congratulations, you can speak lyrics to a beat. Try picking up an instrument, or even editing your own rhymes. Maybe join a group, spend months practicing a new album, timing all your sets, and actually perform your songs and all their parts live. Alternatively, you could try to perform a duet where you take turns talking to a beat. I'm sorry if you like rap, but honestly, aside from lyrical talent, it takes little to no musical talent to perform or create.

Just compare some modern frontrunners like Lil Wayne and Drake to metal bands such as Trivium and Five Finger Death Punch. All of them are great artists in their own right, but they are on entirely different levels when it comes to performances and tracks. I mean no disrespect to anyone who enjoys rap, nor to any of the early rappers who talked about real problems in their lives. I'm merely voicing my opinions and would like to thank you for your time. Rap is music, but it is hardly on par with many other genres when it comes to talent and performance.

3 Pop

I don't think this could be applied to anything today unless it's Taylor Swift or Harry Styles. It's not a bad style, but the top songs are often gross and not family-friendly. I wouldn't even listen to them with my friends.

I'm sick of people with almost no talent going onto shows like the X-Factor, saying that they "just want to make music." I'm sorry, but that is bull. They just want to make money. If they really wanted to make music, they would be writing it instead of going on all these shows and auto-tuning everything.

Kids can easily play this music on the keyboard, drum kit, or guitar after minimal lessons. In metal, it takes years to learn a basic song. In pop, the music just repeats itself. You need to have more than just one tune! And the lyrics are all about fame, being rich, and sex. But the pop "musicians" aren't famous for their music most of the time.

If the boy band One Direction was comprised of ugly hobos but still produced the same music, they wouldn't be famous. One time, when I was walking through the markets of Malaysia, I saw an old man with his legs backward, playing a violin in rags with extreme skill, with a few measly coins in front of him. People like these deserve all the money and fame, not some posers! It's amazing how many people like this genre.

4 Emo Emo is a style of rock music characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace.

First off, modern emo is all whiny and stuff, but the real emo was a lot different. Original emo was a music genre and was mostly not sad. In fact, it was quite a happy type of music. It was called emo because of the emotion the musicians put into their music, unlike pop singers who just sing what they are told to.

Sunny Day Real Estate is a good example. They were original emo. Listen to their music and look at the actual band members. None of them have dyed their hair, wore eyeliner or anything like that. Modern emo can be annoying, but if you're going to discuss a music genre, make sure you're clear about it.

5 Dubstep

It is pretty easy to make a bad Dubstep song, but some are pretty great. I don't think I would pay to listen, but there are quite a few songs that I have enjoyed. The only problem is that people who like the genre have an issue with admitting that there is very little variety. If it is original, it is probably because it isn't like the songs that anybody likes. Therefore, most people dislike it.

Most of the very popular songs (I said MOST) are very, VERY similar, to a point where I am satisfied by one song because there isn't much else to hear other than breathtaking drops and bass... but they all have the SAME drops and bass, making it less qualified as a good music genre.

6 K-pop

K-Pop is a manufactured, soulless product pumped out of a Korean factory. It's a mindless cash grab for pre-pubescent girls. It's a pathetic excuse for music.

I have a whole bunch of Korean friends who are obsessed with it. They refuse to accept the fact that the music is often meaningless and written by hired writers. It's all about money. The singers are heavily auto-tuned, and all you have to do is meet Korean beauty standards to make it big. The industry can be discriminatory. Unless you're extremely pale, you're considered to have little worth. It's all about image, which isn't a good message for boys and girls to internalize. They may start to think they have to be extremely thin and pale to be considered beautiful.

7 Pornogrind

I agree that this is terrible, but I have to say the following: 1) This isn't really a music genre. It's grindcore with explicit lyrics, and it's incorrect to create music genres based solely on lyrical themes. 2) We are talking about only a few bands here, and they're getting too much attention. 3) Many people think Pornogrind/Grindcore are metal genres, but they're not. Grindcore has little-to-no metal in it. It's mostly punk - hardcore punk and crust punk - mixed with industrial and noise rock. There may be some slight traces of thrash metal, but thrash metal itself is a fusion of speed metal and hardcore punk, so part of thrash is punk again.

8 Hip-Hop

I feel that Hip-Hop is an okay genre, but half of the time, it is just about sex, drugs, and many inappropriate things. I can understand that there are good songs sometimes, but many of them convey horrible messages. It is hard to listen to something that primarily discusses sexual relationships between females and males. It isn't as though every song in the genre has a problem. It's just that many of them are hard to listen to because the most popular songs often revolve around these topics. I just don't like the message or the lyrics that it spreads. It is hard to ignore them since they constitute most of the song lyrics.

9 Screamo

I do not enjoy songs that are all screaming, but if a song has a few lines of screaming, then it is very, very possible that it could be a good song. Bring Me the Horizon, Get Scared, Black Veil Brides, Sleeping with Sirens, etc., all have very talented singers in their bands.

When I think of screamo, I think of angst, madness, and anxiety, which is exactly what these artists are trying to express. The people who do this for a living have figured out how to make money by screaming, so they aren't total idiots. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult to execute good screaming for a song.

I admit there are terrible songs that consist solely of growling, screaming, and shrieking, but there are also really good songs. Originally, punk artists were trying to be unpopular and to sound really bad, and yet they receive less hate than screamo does. A really good example of high-quality music with screaming are True Friends by Bring Me the Horizon and Until the Day I Die by Story of the Year. These songs aren't exactly screamo, but they are exactly what you should listen to when starting out and getting used to screaming in music.

10 Nightcore

Yes, it gets worse. Spotify has been rebranding nightcore as "sped-up songs," and it's precisely what you would expect. Not even retro/classic songs are safe, as the soft rock/yacht rock subgenre is the biggest victim of this. You get sped-up versions of tunes like "So Into You" by Atlanta Rhythm Section, "Biggest Part of Me" by Ambrosia (which is a live re-recording and not the original, mainly to avoid copyright issues), and "Crazy Love" by Poco.

It seems as if the original vinyl was bought, sped up to 45, recorded on cheap software, and then deemed acceptable. In my opinion, nightcore is not the worst of music genres, but it is one of the laziest…

The Contenders
11 Teen Pop

Pop music specifically designed for young teens is shallow, generic, and meaningless. There is no substance, no creativity, no art. It exists simply to sell to as many mindless teenagers as possible. It's all about making money while providing absolutely nothing of value to the music community.

Oh my God. Nothing could be worse. The only reason these guys have any fame is because teen girls, as the name suggests, think the lead singer is hot. Listen to some of Ross Lynch's music and tell me those songs would be considered even remotely likable if he were average-looking. And the worst thing is, he isn't even attractive, so he is officially the worst musician ever.

People who tell me that their songs are meaningful and cool are also the people who claim that Ross Lynch is a better singer than Freddie Mercury and a better guitarist than Jimi Hendrix. It also disgusts me that people call R5 rock but refuse to say they are pop. Teen pop is not music. R5 is not a band. Ross Lynch is not a musician. Led Zeppelin is music, Pink Floyd is music, The Rolling Stones is music, and Jimi Hendrix is music.

12 Mumble Rap

I originally posted this comment on a remix, but the listing got deleted.

Mumble Rap? More like Double Crap! It's unbelievable how mainstream modern "rappers" can become so wealthy when they seemingly have no skill! My parents are fortunate to have grown up listening to what I consider real music, while I'm stuck with Mumble Rap. The entirety of my school seems not to understand that true music is supposed to be art. The music they listen to lacks art or passion, and yet they still call themselves fans of music. I can't stand this sub-genre, nor can I stand most other modern mainstream rap "music"!

13 Country Rap

Who thought mixing country and rap was a good idea? Well, it is an atrociously terrible idea. It is just a bunch of country people, rapping with awful southern accents, rapping about how rednecks are the best and farms, with a beat mixing banjos and the electronic rap beat. I listened to country rap before, and it is a disgrace to all country, so much so, that I will never listen to it again. This music makes me cringe so much.

When people thought this was going to be the next big genre, I genuinely feared for the future of the music industry. This is the most annoying genre, and I never want to hear it being blasted from another pontoon boat again!

14 Bro Country

...Ever since the new Jason Aldean single was released, I believe I might have proven my point. I've listened to it and... look, conservatives may defend the song to death, and I kind of get it. Hardcore Trumpers need their patriotic country music too, but it literally sounds like every other song that Jason Aldean has released in the past.

This music is intended for the teenage "yee yee" crowd that wears Realtree camo jackets all day and drives squatted trucks. Hell, I live in a rural town and I do have a small farm, but rural does not equal redneck. I'm sick of it. "Try That In A Small Town" is a testament to the ongoing death of country music as we know it, to the point where I'd prefer "Big Dreams In A Small Town" by Restless Heart over this. However, Restless Heart does have some good songs...

15 Crunkcore Crunkcore (also known as crunk punk and scrunk) is a musical fusion genre characterized by the combination of musical elements from crunk, post-hardcore, heavy metal, pop, electronic and dance music. The genre often features screamed vocals, hip hop beats, and sexually provocative lyrics. The genre... read more

Crunkcore is one of the most laughable, absurd, and poorly executed genres of music in existence. It's a combination of screamo and rap, two styles that are already horrible in their own right. But when combined, they create an abomination... like a demon from the lowest depths of hell. Nothing is good about it. In fact, crunkcore is downright terrible in every possible way.

After seeing BOTDF, Brokencyde, and some others (all mentioned above are crunkcore artists) on some lists, I decided to give them a listen. They were even worse than the way they're presented. Absolutely atrocious.

16 Deathcore

I'm really surprised that this hasn't made it past the top 20 yet. It's way, way worse than death metal, at least that requires some talent! In a deathcore song, there are about 20 breakdowns in each song while the singer screams and pig squeals about how he wants to confront the school bully. Notable bands are Suicide Silence, Whitechapel, and Carnifex.

Made by people who misunderstood death metal. The lyrics aren't as powerful, and quite often, you will find bands with clean vocals and emo-like lyrics along with breakdowns. Not to say there aren't good artists, but they are few in number. It's basically metalcore’s big brother.

17 Dance

Good dance music (EDM) is actually just as challenging, if not harder, to make than rock music. Yes, I like my rock and have an extremely wide knowledge of its history and culture, especially psychedelic rock. EDM is looked down upon by the older generation or by teenagers who think they were born in the wrong generation.

For those of you who think EDM is a brand-new genre of music, you are wrong. A group called Kraftwerk produced one of the first electronic albums and were a huge success. Do you know why? Because the genre can produce limitless sub-genres due to the way it is made. Dance is one of the best genres of music, and for those of you who don't like it, give a listen to 808 State Pacific 202 and then come back.

18 Death Metal

The only reason why meatheads love this genre is that they always want something "heavy," and heavy always means "more awesome!" But that's not the case. Metal was already close to being unbearable to listen to because the lyrics are nothing but killing and dying.

With Death Metal, I can't even hear the lyrics for crying out loud. They're wailing on guitars and drums, and screaming so much that it goes up and down like a child trying to bang on the drums. The end result is nothing but noise. There's a big difference between music and noise, and this genre and all of its bands are the most unintelligible. Keep banging your heads and hope that you won't lose your heads.

19 Bollywood

Bollywood's most popular songs can only be described as a series of nonsensical, badly choreographed dances. The music is repetitive and cheesy, with lyrics that make a typical pop song sound like Shakespeare. The entire genre is focused on a visual spectacle in lieu of any actual artistic integrity or musical proficiency. It's like a cheap, third-rate circus show that everyone is forced to watch while their brain rots out of their ears.

I don't understand how people in India have the courage to even call Bollywood a music industry. Seriously? It seems like a talent-less bunch saying "Your eyes, your face, our love, our marriage" over and over again in every song. And then there's some random so-called "rapper" who occasionally chips in to "rap", which always consists of "Get on the floor, yeah, groove it, yeah, yo, yo, move it". 99.9% of the songs are like that. Plus, there's no production quality at all. Everything is borrowed from other international music. Bollywood is just commercial marketing noise which is sold off as music to a billion people with no taste and no clue as to what real music is.

Damn, how can this be at #3? Vote this up, people!

20 Gangsta Rap

The worst type of nonsense ever discovered. "Gangsta", which means sagging your pants and robbing and harming civilians, unlike the real gangsters (mafia). It's cringe music overall and garbage music as well.

Absolutely the worst type of noise that can come out of a speaker or someone's mouth. It seems like everyone who listens to it thinks they are some cool gangster who can harm families and disrespect everyone they don't like, and they are better than everyone else because they can spew out offensive words at everybody. How about they rank this pile of music in place number 2, right next to its brother. Bunch of irresponsible people grabbing their crotch because apparently that's the only way they can make a song.

21 Trap Music

Trap music has some of the most mindless lyrics and repetitive beats of any genre. It's based around a simple 4/4 drum pattern, with almost every song sounding exactly the same. The rappers deliver their lyrics in a monotone voice with absolutely no emotion or expression. Moreover, the lyrics themselves are typically about money, sex, and violence - themes that are generic, unoriginal, and completely meaningless. The whole genre is trash.

I don’t like to criticize music, as I'm a musician, and the music I listen to isn’t mainstream. It’s mainly underground. However, these are the reasons I dislike, nay, detest this genre. It's a lousy excuse for music. It's a genre full of beats that all sound the same, with lyrics glorifying sex and drugs and autotuned vocals. Ninety percent of the artists can’t sing to save their lives.

It takes little to absolutely no talent to produce this "music," and the lyrics are nonsensical jargon that revolve around money, fame, sex, and drugs. Artists such as Cardi B prove this. This genre needs to die, and it needs to die quickly.

22 R&B

There's no denying that this is the worst genre. Now, don't get me wrong. Some R&B musicians are very talented, but the music they write is just crap.

Justin Bieber, anyone?

I would rather listen to whiny emo music than to this corny, horny R&B piece.

And who put metal at 13? What?

If you ask me, it's R&B in first place, then pop. Both are complete disgraces to music. They are only liked by people with no musical sense because that's what mainstream media show, so they think it's good. It's just a pile of garbage. Just kill this genre already!

Rihanna produces pop, and honestly decent pop, which is more than I can say about most pop artists these days. But yeah, the new Chris Brown song, and Don't Tell 'Em? That song is terrible. REAL R&B is TLC, Destiny's Child, older Beyoncé songs, and R. Kelly. So listen to that, and you will know what was good. Also, Alicia Keys. The '90s and the early 2000s (2000 to 2009) were the best times for R&B.

23 Nu Metal

Seriously, I hear metal every day on television while I'm watching movies and series in different countries. One of my local TV channels plays a metal song just before every series starts.

However, I hate listening to them because they sound cheap. They are overplayed by individuals who think that they can be energized by metal instead of something like Trance.

Drum beats are OK, but the screaming is out of hand, and distorted guitars sound like thousands of loud, distorted farts.

If they're so happy about these sounds blowing up on their speakers, how about they stop overplaying this trash which spreads anger?

24 Black Metal

The Reasons Why I Hate Black Metal (2nd Movement)

1. It's repetitive. The guitar riff in one song sounds exactly the same as the riff in another song. The same goes for the drums.

2. Guitar. The musicians either tremolo-pick throughout the song or simply strum two power chords followed by three simple notes all the time. Solos are nonexistent in the genre.

3. Bass. Do these bands even have bassists?

4. Drums. Nothing special here, just blast beats (which do require some talent, but once you learn them, they're easy) and double bass drumming.

5. Vocals. This is one area where Black Metal excels, but the vocals are often incomprehensible and sometimes even disgusting.

6. Lyrics. This is another area where Black Metal shines. However, I personally don't care about the lyrics. What's the point if you can't even understand them?

7. It's overrated as a metal sub-genre.

8. Most of the fanbase for this genre consists of naive teenagers who think they're cool simply because they listen to Black Metal and worship Satan.

9. Most of the musicians in this genre are poser Satanists. They wouldn't even harm an ant, although they write lyrics about Satan and goat sacrifices, among other things.

25 Techno

Techno is a soulless genre of electronic music. There's no emotion, creativity, or expression in the music. It's a monotonous, repetitive beat with no depth or substance. The lyrics, if there are any, are generic and meaningless. It's music for the sake of it, without any real passion or meaning. It's the equivalent of a computer algorithm pumping out generic, boring, formulaic crap. Techno is the musical equivalent of white bread.

It is SO EASY to make crappy music on your computer... there are few good songs, but not none. But I haven't found many that I like and my friend who is obsessed with this genre suggests songs all the time to get me interested in it, and I've only like around 5 out of maybe 200 songs at least, because he started showing me songs two years ago when we agreed to trade each other one song every Friday, him trying to get me into Techno, and me trying to get him into punk. He likes punk now, more than I like Techno, but not by much. You should try this with your friends because it is really fun and the idea found its way to my principal, who started a club where you suggest a song by writing the name, artist, and genre on a paper (genre on back) and then folding it and putting it in a glass bowl (very hunger games-like except not has terrifying of an experience lol). The bowls are labelled by genre and you pick a song from one of the bowls you would have been required previously to include in a list of music you want to understand more or don't like but are considering giving a chance. I used to generalize and HATE electronic, techno, and dubstep, but now I have a few songs in those genres, so this truly helps, at least a little.

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