Best Decade

[badseed]

As I'm restructuring my chart I've come to realize the top 20 or so is actually very 21st century heavy. But then looking at my (heavily dated aside from 2010s) decade charts I realize that there's gonna be way more from the 60s and 70s in the long run. So the way I see it, although there's not nearly as much great music these last 15 years than 1965-75, the absolute best recent stuff is just as good if not better than any of the old stuff.

[Infinity183]

The 1980s are definitely my favorite decade in music. Such an underrated period. Everybody seems to despise the decade for the overuse of synthesizers, gated drums, and generally commercial feel of music. For me personally, the identifiably 80s production style and catchy, hard-hitting melodic progressions are assets. Unlike the mainstream pop of this century, songs from the 80s still had original melodies, edge, sensible lyrics, or at least attitude. Of course, there was also the plethora of great new wave, post-punk, and early indie music, not to mention Kate Bush, my favorite musician of all time, was at her very best this decade. However, I love both the MTV-tailored pop and the more underground art pieces alike.

The 1970s are very close, as there was definitely much more structural and sonic experimentation that decade than there was in the 80s. However, they're ultimately spoiled by the onslaught of disco, a genre that is very hit-or-miss for me (its early 80s counterpart, post-disco, is far superior). While some groups, like the Bee Gees and Earth, Wind & Fire were consistently great, a lot of disco either dragged on forever or was just straight-up corny. It's not just a minor nitpick that I'm exaggerating because disco was absolutely inescapable during the second half of the 1970s.

The 1990s are also a great decade for music, just not quite as memorable as the 80s. The mid-90s, especially from about 1993 to 1997 in particular, were all-around fantastic, thanks to all the wonderful grunge, britpop, eurodance, hip hop, and miscellaneous. The early 90s, on the other hand, are a bit so-so, benefitting from masterpieces in the grunge, synthpop, hip hop, and alternative categories, but ranging from excellent to kind of cheap in other fields. The late 90s were the beginning of music's general deterioration into what it is now; although I do like 1997 for its still-musical pop and alternative masterpieces by bands like Radiohead and The Verve, things start to get blander after that.

The 1960s are the most overrated decade for music. Yes, it was the first time that bands were creatively branching out of the horrifyingly repetitive music industry of the mid-20th century, but to me personally, these burgeoning new ideas were not fully realized until the 1970s, at least for the most part. 1967 is a particularly phenomenal year in music, between things like The Velvet Underground and Nico, Sgt. Pepper's, Magical Mystery Tour, Are You Experienced, Songs of Leonard Cohen, The Doors' debut, Surrealistic Pillow, and superb pop songs like "Respect," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," and "San Francisco," but for the most part, 60s music was still a bit simplistic, even if the days of formulaic 8/12-bar blues were long gone.

The 2000s and 2010s, I'm not a huge fan of. There may be some good independent albums, but the vast bulk of music is shackled by the increasing corporatization of the industry and growing focus on raunchy shock value rather than, well, anything musical. The mid-2010s, in particular, are the worst time for music since the early 60s.

[albumceleste]

Best album's decade IMO would be 1965-1975 but if I have to choose I take 60s.
Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Miles, Coltrane, Dylan, Doors, Byrds, Velvet, Simon&Garfunkel, Soul classics, Blues rediscovery and white blues, the birth of power trio and hard rock music...
The huge advance in popular music of that decade has no match. Just listen to a record from 1961-2 and one from 1968-9. It's a world of difference in just a few years.

[RoundTheBend]

[Daredevil42]

1970s>1980s>1960s>2000s>2010s>1950s>1990s

[Fischman]

Trends in music occur any time and rarely line up with a clean break between decades. Most musical eras begin in the middle of one decade and end in the middle of another.

For rock, the greatest decade was '67 - '76
For Jazz, it was '56 - '65

[TrekkiELO]

1980s
1970s
1990s
2000s
2010s
1960s
1950s
_________________
Rick Vendl II

One day you're a hero. Next day you're a clown. There's nothing that is in between. Now you're a 21st Century Man.

[danmarzella]

90s, 70, 60s, 80s, 00s in that roder, done.