60's and 90's With the current economic downturn the music will improve greatly. Only pain brings out historically great music.
The '70s because it was the last decade before music videos made brand management more important than talent or creativity. Then the '90s because it was a repudiation of the '80s.
I'm a rap/hip-hop fanatic, so I'd go with the 90's. Early 2000's was good, but it all went downhill after 2003.
It makes it difficult, because someone nailed it on the head saying the best 10 year span was 65-75. So, it's hard to decide between the two. In that 10 year span you have the Beatles best work, the Beach Boys make the best album of all time, the Band are around, Johnny Cash is making the best country music ever, Bob Dylan's in his prime, David Bowie's in his prime, Led Zeppelin's in their prime, the Who are in their prime, Neil Young is in his prime. You have pioneers like Floyd and Velvet Underground pushing rock forward. Overall though, I would have to say the 70s, just because I feel the last five years of the 70s was still very productive with Punk Rock start ups like the Sex Pistols, Ramones and the Clash. And if you count London Calling as a 70s album, then it's not even a contest. Not to mention New Wave/Post-Punk groups starting up like the Talking Heads, Cars, Joy Division, Blondie, etc. While the early 60s really paved the way with mostly Motown leading the way, the music followed a pretty singular formula, where as the music in the 70s was a lot more diverse. So yeah, I'd say 70s 60s 80s 90s
early 90's hip hop, back when A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr, and Souls of Mischeif were in their prime.
80s music is great, but I didn't start listening to it til the beginning of the 2ks. Now I'm hooked. Oh, and rap/hip hop from the early 90s, before evil men destroyed the art.
Meggo has the right answer, it's '65 - '75. 65 is about where rock was born. Les Paul invented the electric guitar, the cross cultural pollination of the civil rights movement and the disruption of the youth of the day's association with the traditional culture due to Viet Nam and institutionalized bigotry not to mention the ascendance of a drug culture. By 75 most of the rock styles had been established to the point of being exploited as greed took a hold in America. Disco and cocaine were starting to emerge as the new cultural icons. The Beatles, Stones, Who , Zeppelin are still as popular today, 40 years later, as they were then. They are like Bach and Beethoven; they will probably be around for ever. One of the problems I see with the ubiquitous music of today is that regardless of the quality it won't be timeless, it's all discardable and just added to the ever growing catalog of thousands of titles. I rarely listen to any CD more than two or three times where in the olden days I could wear out the grooves on a LP. I don't know whether that's good or bad though
I personally llike late-80s and early-90s the best. Those were my childhood years. It had some great hip hop, dance, rock ballads, alt-rock, grunge. I also appreciate the 70s and late-60s but I don't know as much about those decades.
65-75, and i don't think it's close... excluding hip hop, name a band today that doesn't draw from the beatles, led zeppelin, the who, allman brothers band, or the entire motown scene. blues and rock meet here at their best. you could possibly argue that electronica/ambient, rap, and emo-punk aren't direct derivatives, but i also don't think those genres have the staying power that classic rock does. rap in itself has gone from rhymes to b-boys to gangsta to club.
Yes, and even hip hop has origins in this time period. It really started with The Last Poets, and hip hop beats definitely have strong ties to that era of music.
Anyone who mentions Nirvana in any sense of good music needs to be shot on site. I don't know why people think Nirvana > Foo Fighters. Foo is where it's at.
God no, I think Nirvana was not a precursor to Foo, rather an experiment gone horribly awry. I hate that era of music, and I think Dave had a lot of talent not fully utilized in Nirvana. I hate that Cobain, I'm not glad he's dead, i'm just glad he's not making music anymore.
Most of the best songs are probably from the 60s and 70s, followed by closely by 50s and 80s. Being trailed by the 90s with the 2000s being about 200 miles behind.
