Best Decade for Music

[CorporalClegg]

There are two distinct questions here.

The decade that objectively produced the best [Popular/Rock] music would be the 1960s, obviously. Though, since it's all arbitrary anyway, I think 1065-1975 would be the best answer.

But if the question is "What is the best decade for music," then the answer is overwhelmingly the 1970s for so many different reasons.

ETA: I'll even go an extra step further and say that the most "important" decade for music was the 1930s.

 

[Kor]

For the most part, I prefer lounge, exotica, and vocal easy listening music from the 1950s.

Kor

 

[Mojochi]

Frankly, the widest swath of musical brilliance & diversity to have ever happened in maybe all of human history was happening all over the 1960s.

You obviously have very wide ranging developments in rock & roll, British invasion, Haight Ashbury etc... Nearly every divergence of the art form began then. The Stones, The Doors, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Hendrix, Joplin. It was an explosion of different styles, coming from all over the place, like someone knocked over a fire hydrant, & a rainbow of pop/rock spewed out, even giving birth to Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath's infancy of Heavy Metal, Genesis, Yes, & the birth of prog rock. You can go on endlessly

Then there's the expressionistic intellectual exploration of jazz music by Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, etc... True virtuosic craftsmen wandering the unknown landscape of improvisation, & even fusion with modern pop/rock elements. Plus, a resurgence of appreciation for the old jazz styles, with Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin. Ella Fitzgerald, & Sinatra, still going strong. Heck, Louis Armstrong, after years of being forgotten, had one of his biggest hits in 1967.

Country music was having one of its biggest upheavals, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, a grittier, more powerful style of music than had ever been attempted in the genre. So too the women of country hitting their stride with deeply personal music that hit people right where they lived, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, etc...

Even Folk music was having its heyday, with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, etc... Music was just permeating every aspect of American culture, from every walk of life, in an almost incalculable amount of ways. The artists didn't even know wtf was going on. ELVIS & RAY CHARLES HAD COUNTY ALBUMS!

The Rhythm & Blues movement blasted onto the scene, Motown, soul, funk, etc.... James Brown, Aretha, Tina Turner, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, etc... Nobody even knew what to do with it all. Reggae popped up with Bob Marley & the like. Movie musicals came back, Streisand, Julie Andrews. Judy Garland had a tv show! & her musical director was MEL TORME. Everyone thought civilization might come to an end, & they ALL wanted to have a say in their art.

Jesus, there was even masterful CLASSICAL music still being composed, by the likes of Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Aaron Copland & Leonard Bernstein, men still invested in the grand forms from which all Western music had originated. Never in all of human history was so much going on in music. It's taken me half a lifetime to study the musical goings-on of that decade which preceded my birth

 

[DigificWriter]

I was a teenager in the '90s, and a large chunk of my favorite music is from the 60s and 70s.

 

[MacLeod]

I was a teenager in the '90s, and a large chunk of my favorite music is from the 60s and 70s.

Do we see a likeing for music from a generation before us, i.e what our parents grew up with.

 

[JRoss]

Very hard to say definitively. There was so much good stuff in all of them, but so much garbage. I guess let's go in descending order:

1990s, 1980s, 1960s, 2000s, 1970s, 2010s, 1950s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1910s, 1900s.

 

[JRoss]

Rock & roll-era music historians/critics would agree with us on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone's_500_Greatest_Songs_of_All_Time



Likewise, I have a college-level textbook on R&R-era music history. Its chapter breakdown is as follows:

• Up to 1955: 1 chapter
• Remainder of the 1950s: 1 chapter
• 1960s: 5 chapters
• 1970s: 3 chapters
• 1980s: 2 chapters
• 1990s: 2 chapters
• 2000s: 1 chapter

The 1960s are simply the cultured choice.

You can have your own opinion, and I respect it. But man, Rolling Stone is full of posers. They choose things for their lists that they think will make them look cool. Look at their lists of greatest vocalists and guitarists.

 

[gblews]

You can have your own opinion, and I respect it. But man, Rolling Stone is full of posers. They choose things for their lists that they think will make them look cool. Look at their lists of greatest vocalists and guitarists.

It's been many years since I've seen RS's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists so I can't speak to that list, but their list of 100 Greatest Vocalists in the rock era is absolutely great. One may argue about some of the placements, but overall, the list is totally complete. The selection process was awsome as I recall.

However, I do agree that RS has done as much as any media entity in the rock era to segregate and harm rock music.

 

[bigglesworth]

Voted for the 1990s, though I found it difficult to choose between the 60s and the 90s. I think the 90s had the best selection in almost every genre, be it rock, pop, country, punk, hip hop, rap, new age and every other music scene.

 

[tomswift2002]

I voted for the 80's. Although my favorite group, The Carpenters, is from the 70's/early-80's. But I also like the music, essentially from the 80's on back. The 90's I found to be a very mixed bag that went downhill, and is still going down hill. The early-90's seemed to be still doing 80's stuff, and then country seemed to take over in the mid-90's. Unfortunately the late-90's went for rap and a lot of similar sounding acts, that have even carried on to today.