Top 10 Worst Music Genres

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.

At least with Pop and other unpopular genres, there is variety and songs that stick out for being good. With Country, however, you are essentially listening to the same song over and over. Beer, girls, tractor, river, jeans. The majority of country is now just some guy with a fake-sounding accent, singing about how he wants to get with a girl or how he loves the countryside. That's it. There is very rarely any meaning to the songs, just singing about drinking and getting with girls.

There are good country artists and songs (Johnny Cash, Zac Brown, Toby Keith), but the genre has gotten to the point where there is essentially no substance to many of the songs, in music or lyrics.

Party, feel-good songs are fine, but they can't be the entire genre.

Old rap used to be thought-provoking and catchy, but now you can barely translate what the rappers are saying. Additionally, it's often fraught with negative messages. I have yet to hear a positive rap song these days.

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.

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.

Emo is for soft, whiny teenagers who think they're misunderstood when they're just annoying. They lack the strength of character to solve anything but their non-existent relationship issues. Emo sucks.

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.

No one wants to hear your crappy three-chord songs while your singer, with his girl haircut, whines emotional lyrics that he wrote in an hour. This is the absolute worst: Paramore, 30 Seconds to Mars, Fall Out Boy. These bands are absolutely awful and deserve to be forced to fly over the Bermuda Triangle.

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.

Dubstep is the worst kind of electronic music. I'm not a fan of electronica to begin with, but I can appreciate some of it if it manages to be entertaining and interesting. However, Dubstep fails on both of these levels. This sub-genre sounds less like dance music and more like disorganized, textureless synth tones, not to mention the grating production effects and annoying vocal snippets (if I can even call them that). This style isn't entertaining, and it definitely isn't different from any other intolerable Dubstep song. The only reason I would dance to this is if I was possessed.

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.

I used to be obsessed with this genre. Now, the only K-pop artist I like nowadays is BoA Kwon because she has a unique voice, can dance, and has good songs. However, I find the rest of K-pop to be really overrated, especially the boy groups. Most of the boys in these groups look like girls. The music is extremely catchy, but most songs lack meaningful content, though there are exceptions like Bulletproof by BTS. To be honest, the genre feels overproduced, and some artists only get famous for their looks. I now prefer rock music. Sorry.

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.

Every rap song seems to have the same theme. It is either a diss track, or an artist is bragging about their money, sex, drugs, and crime. Critics argue there is nothing original about rap music, and most "talented rappers" are accused of paying others to do all the work for them, including writing lyrics and composing, while they auto-tune all of their work. To some, it just sounds like someone screaming into their microphone.

One might argue that there have been good rap songs in previous years, but the current popular rap songs seem inferior compared to previous generations of the genre. Some music enthusiasts lament what they see as a downfall in music from the times of Rock, which they consider the superior genre.

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.

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"!

I always thought rap music was supposed to be fast, energetic, and rhythmic. There's a reason why that particular genre is memorable and recognized a lot, even if it isn't exactly for everybody.

With mumble rap, it's kind of the opposite. There's not much energy to go with, resulting in boring, monotonous stuff blaring out that's more likely to turn me off rather than make me jam out.

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…

This should not be considered a music genre in the slightest. It merely involves speeding up or pitching up someone else's work. At least with other genres, like Dubstep, for example, there is effort put in that creates a final product that resonates with the listener, whether they may like it or not. This genre seems like a lazy way of appealing to an audience, involving little to no real work or innovation.

Certainly, not a lot has to be done to make a good track or song all of the time - sometimes simplicity is a great thing. However, in the case of Nightcore, since no actual work is done, this is the exception. This is just my opinion, though.

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!

This is country rap, basically summed up in countless words. Imagine talking in a regular, old country singing voice. Now insert some of the worst rapping ever to grace the earth and BOOM! You've just invented one of the worst genres ever!

...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...

This subgenre is definitely the reason why I am ambivalent towards country music in general. In fact, it's the subgenre that heavily promotes Southern stereotypes through its music, and using guest rappers only exacerbates the situation. It works when Big & Rich do it, but with other artists, it mixes together like water and oil.

For me, the best country subgenre is obviously country rock, as it's pretty much the only one with actual substance. In fact, even artists in the '80s and '90s such as Exile, Alabama, Diamond Rio, and Confederate Railroad (yes, I am aware of the name) are considered country rock as well. So, yeah, bro country is arguably the worst thing to ever exist in country music...

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.

Just because it's harder to make (even though it typically isn't), doesn't make it better. Also, EDM usually is pretty easy to make as long as you're semi-nerdy with a computer, whereas playing the guitar (of any kind) is kind of hard. I don't know if you, Mister "EDM," have ever played a guitar, but after a while, your fingers, hands, arms, and legs get tired from standing (not sitting on your butt) with a wooden/metal instrument hanging off your shoulders and holding down strings, while pressing up and down along frets, giving you calluses.

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.

I can understand why most people hate this genre. They don't think it's good music or anything.

This is just a guess of mine, but I think that death metal is meant to challenge people about what they consider to be good music. Like how most people say that death metal's not real music. I've said many times before that there's no such thing as real music and that all music is subjective. So, what you consider to be fake music may be real music to others. I think that's the whole point of death metal: to let people know that there are some folks who do like the artist's growling style and may think that it's real music.

But like I said, this is all just a guess of mine.

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.

Deathcore does require talent, but the music is overly complex, i.e., Rings of Saturn. The constant switch between growling and screaming gives many people headaches, while the time signatures are so difficult to follow that the music becomes impossible to enjoy.

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.

I don't think anyone actually likes rap or hip-hop so much that they get goosebumps listening to it. Rap and hip-hop are just disguises for one's personality to fit into their group.

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.

This is by far the worst genre of music that I have ever heard in my life, and it's due to the bands that use it! BOTDF is, by far, the worst band of all time, due to their behavior and style of music, which is this genre I'm talking about here! These people don't deserve to be signed to a record label.

Also, one of my old friends listens to this horrible band for no reason whatsoever. It's just terrible! If you want to listen to a better band with a better song, such as Green Day's Bang Bang, Evermore's Hey Boys and Girls, or Paramore's Pressure, for example, go do that rather than wasting your time listening to a band that has no talent. You will know what I mean by that!

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!

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.

Awful, just bloody awful. I don't know about anyone else, but listening to someone say how many ‘hoes’ they get and how much sex they've had is like being hung by my anatomy off the edge of the Empire State Building. It's why modern music is so bad and why I listen to the better genres like rock. Because let's be honest, rock is the best.

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.

In my opinion, trap music is just a pile of dog water, filled with the same repetitive deep hums, booms, and whoops. Additionally, the way they make the voices sound with their free auto-tune app is downright goofy. Seven-year-olds seem to love this music and swarm it. The second someone criticizes it, they retort in a surprisingly mature manner, saying, "What would you know? You are only like two, hahaha."

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.

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.

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?

Nu Metal is sort of what happened to metal post-grunge. It was pretty popular with my peers when I was a teenager. The common aspects of it seem to be: an increased emphasis on the kind of depressed emotional and lyric content that came from grunge, the near-complete elimination of guitar solos, and of the technical aspects of metal that had preceded it, and a large propensity for influences that have more in common with styles like hardcore punk and industrial. The vocals tended to become whiny, or follow a sort of standardized format between clean vocals and screaming.

Indeed, this was the genre that, even though those original bands were still there, killed off classic rock in the '80s. Bombastic epic sounds have been done in American rock music before with bands like Boston, Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Kansas, etc., but hair metal goes overboard with the concept and the genre comes off as a parody of rock music as a result.

Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi may execute it well, in my opinion, but the entire genre died out too quickly and it comes off as forgettable, dated, and cheesy to many people.

Maybe it's partly a generational thing, since I was born in '84. By the time I was a pre-teen, I knew of this music as something advertised on commercials for '80s power ballad compilation CDs. When I went through a metalhead phase as a teenager, we resented these bands because they weren't particularly heavy or rebellious. They were viewed as bands that appealed to teen girls.

In my perception, this genre was largely a commercial bandwagon based on image and fashion. The music consisted of essentially cheesy pop songs with distorted guitars and too much reverb on the drums. There might be a gimmicky technical guitar solo thrown in as a saving grace to an otherwise bland, predictable song. The genre quickly became incredibly cliché, slickly produced, and was about nothing more than a glorified rock star lifestyle.

When it wasn't producing power ballads meant to woo the female demographic, it churned out dumb party songs. All the spandex and crazy poofy hair were basically a big marketing gimmick for a bunch of bands that allowed themselves to be turned into a stereotype. Some industry executives in suits decided at the time that this was the thing to replicate, and it quickly became a cookie-cutter genre.