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I've seen this adjective associated with a work or a perfomance: does it mean 1: awfully bad or 2: with a character like cheese?

Unsure if you're joking, but this is as close to an answer I can give:
'Cheesy' means something along the lines of 'excessively emotional'. If music sounds overly 'romantic' (not in the musical sense), then it is cheesy. Kind of.
That's an approximate definition. I imagine wiktionary has a better one.

Thanks. The meaning was ambiguous to me even after the many examples on the net.

I woud add: inauthentic, contrived, overdone...