Which decade was better overall? Or, did each have a superior version of select genres resulting in a stalemate?

90's by a good margin overall but my favorite type of rock music didn't take off really until 2000s.

But we can all agree Duran Duran, A-Ha and Toto would kick all their asses.

Isn't music from 2000 and on just sampled music from the 90's and earlier?

RooAg said:

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90's by a good margin overall but my favorite type of rock music didn't take off really until 2000s.

But we can all agree Duran Duran, A-Ha and Toto would kick all their asses.

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What? Emo crap?

If we are just talking rock, it is close. 90's country is the huge titan in this fight. Nothing is even close in the 00's. Rap was big, but hardly a fraction of 90's country. 90's by a landslide.

TXAG 05 said:

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RooAg said:

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90's by a good margin overall but my favorite type of rock music didn't take off really until 2000s.

But we can all agree Duran Duran, A-Ha and Toto would kick all their asses.

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What? Emo crap?

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System of a Down
Foo Fighters
White Stripes
The Killers
The Strokes
Audioslave
Muse
Etc.

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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<as the 70s and 80s just roll their eyes>

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Looking at any week of Billboard Top 10 from the 70s and 80s is like looking up the top 10 movies for any week in the summer in the 80s, non-stop heaters.

Yep. And for personal preference I would add that's when Blink started getting big, MCR, NFG, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, Angels & Airwaves, etc.

Probably not many people's favorites, but I'd take them over the Nickelbacks and Matchbox 20's any day of the week.

El Gallo Blanco said:

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The 70's and the early/mid 90's were the best eras for rock, by far, and it's not even close. Those are the two ground breaking/innovating golden ages and will both stand the test of time.

People try to laugh off or downplay the 90's, but all at one time, you had acts like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, REM, Faith No More, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. putting out absolute FIRE music. Hell, I'll even throw bands like The Cranberries and one to two-hit wonder bands like Four Non Blondes and Candlebox in there.

And I love 80's music, even though it's mostly pop...but for gritty, raw, rock and roll with soul? 70's and 90's.

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they needed a second single

El Gallo Blanco said:

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The 70's and the early/mid 90's were the best eras for rock, by far, and it's not even close. Those are the two ground breaking/innovating golden ages and will both stand the test of time.

People try to laugh off or downplay the 90's, but all at one time, you had acts like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, REM, Faith No More, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. putting out absolute FIRE music. Hell, I'll even throw bands like The Cranberries and one to two-hit wonder bands like Four Non Blondes and Candlebox in there.

And I love 80's music, even though it's mostly pop...but for gritty, raw, rock and roll with soul? 70's and 90's.

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There was tons of Rock in the 80s don't discount it all as synth pop or hair bands. Some carried over from the 70s but there was plenty that was new too. And several you mentioned actually started in the 80s (REM, RHCP, Radiohead even STP formed in 1985 originally playing the LA club scene as Swing and then Mighty Joe Young).

80s big name rock bands:
Gun's n' Roses
Metallica
U2
Def Leppard
Motley Crue
Talking Heads
Whitesnake
REM - which pretty much made Alt Rock mainstream
Dire Straits
Tom Pettty
ZZ Top
Pretenders
Iron Maiden
Skid Row
Foreigner
The Police
Aerosmith - although their 70s stuff is better

Punk bands were plentiful too:
Husker Du
X
Social Distortion
Bad Brains
DOA
Buzzcocks

I do love a lot of the early 90s stuff like you mentioned but the 80s when you combine the Rock that did exist plus the synth pop and the hair bands it's better than the 90s overalll although maybe not just for rock.

I'm curious about the sweet spot for the "What decade of music was the best?" question in terms of the respondents' age.

I'm guessing that for most people the answer is based on the time that they were 13-22 or so, but I'm not sure what that age range would be. So if the majority of one's 13-22 years are in the 90s, would they choose that decade of music as "the best"


I chose 13-22 as that is the time when most are in middle school until leaving college. And then the adulting process starts and as the responsibilities go up, the volume goes down. And everything after that just isn't as good, and before that time is overrated.


That age also probably corresponds to important questions like, "When was SNL at its best?", "Who was the greatest (NBA, NFL QB, MLB) player of all time" or "What was your most watched or favorite movie?"

I think it's a mistake to compare music with decades and instead compare eras. The 70s may have been better than the 60s, but I think 1965-1969 is better than any 5 year span of the 70s.

Well my 13-22 range is 1979-1988 so yeah definitely aligns to my favorite era. Maybe 14-23 which is 1980-1989 for me perfectly in the 80s/ But yeah I imagine it's that 13/14 age for the start of most peoples era.

Diggity said:

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El Gallo Blanco said:

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The 70's and the early/mid 90's were the best eras for rock, by far, and it's not even close. Those are the two ground breaking/innovating golden ages and will both stand the test of time.

People try to laugh off or downplay the 90's, but all at one time, you had acts like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, REM, Faith No More, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. putting out absolute FIRE music. Hell, I'll even throw bands like The Cranberries and one to two-hit wonder bands like Four Non Blondes and Candlebox in there.

And I love 80's music, even though it's mostly pop...but for gritty, raw, rock and roll with soul? 70's and 90's.

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they needed a second single

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I saw a video of Linda Perry singing this song recently and she sounded amazing, even though she looked like Keith Richards.

I was pleasantly surprised that she was still alive and not dead or strung out and broke living on the streets. Then I googled her and found out she wrote or produced songs for some big named artists like Christina Aguilera, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Celine Dion, and Dolly Parton, and is worth like $12MM.

BRAVO.

yeah, there was a rumor going around for a while that she had killed herself. You never know how those get started.

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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El Gallo Blanco said:

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The 70's and the early/mid 90's were the best eras for rock, by far, and it's not even close. Those are the two ground breaking/innovating golden ages and will both stand the test of time.

People try to laugh off or downplay the 90's, but all at one time, you had acts like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, REM, Faith No More, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers etc. putting out absolute FIRE music. Hell, I'll even throw bands like The Cranberries and one to two-hit wonder bands like Four Non Blondes and Candlebox in there.

And I love 80's music, even though it's mostly pop...but for gritty, raw, rock and roll with soul? 70's and 90's.

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There was tons of Rock in the 80s don't discount it all as synth pop or hair bands. Some carried over from the 70s but there was plenty that was new too. And several you mentioned actually started in the 80s (REM, RHCP, Radiohead even STP formed in 1985 originally playing the LA club scene as Swing and then Mighty Joe Young).

80s big name rock bands:
Gun's n' Roses
Metallica
U2
Def Leppard
Motley Crue
Talking Heads
Whitesnake
REM - which pretty much made Alt Rock mainstream
Dire Straits
Tom Pettty
ZZ Top
Pretenders
Iron Maiden
Skid Row
Foreigner
The Police
Aerosmith - although their 70s stuff is better

Punk bands were plentiful too:
Husker Du
X
Social Distortion
Bad Brains
DOA
Buzzcocks

I do love a lot of the early 90s stuff like you mentioned but the 80s when you combine the Rock that did exist plus the synth pop and the hair bands it's better than the 90s overalll although maybe not just for rock.

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I was born in 81. I bet I would agree with you if I was5-10 years older. I certainly love a lot of that music. But my interest in music was starting to take off as a preteen/teen in the early to mid 90's as that new sound was coming out and it just did it for me. Still does.

Also agreed that several of the bands I mention started in the 80's, but their real magic, imo, came in the 90's.

Diggity said:

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yeah, there was a rumor going around for a while that she had killed herself. You never know how those get started.

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One of the questions I will ask God if I ever get to meet him. Who? Why? And How?

speaking of 90's 1 hit wonders:

… If God had a name, what would it be?
And would you call it to His face
If you were faced with Him in all His glory?
What would you ask if you had just one question?

Diggity said:

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speaking of 90's 1 hit wonders:

… If God had a name, what would it be?
And would you call it to His face
If you were faced with Him in all His glory?
What would you ask if you had just one question?

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Hellya, Joan Osbourne, Natalie Imbruglia, Natalie Merchant, Sarah Mclachlan, Dido, Lisa Loeb...all included on my "1990's Eckerd's" Spotify playlist. Never be ashamed to listen to any of those.

Lonely cat ladies made some top notch contemporary adult rock back in the 90's.

It's interesting that enough time has passed to really think (somewhat) objectively about the legacy of the Oughts. Talking about music from the 00s now is the same as talking about the 70s in the 90s.

I was at A&M in the early 00s, so you'd think that I would be in the sweet spot of liking that era no matter what. But man, I acutely remember missing the great 90s rock music of my early teen years and thinking most of the mainstream rock in 2000ish was soooo bad. It felt to me like everything that 'grunge' had reacted to (overproduction, vapid lyrics, homogenous sound) came back STRONG in that era. I found myself gravitating to what then became 'indie' rock because it at least sounded less stale than what was on the radio.

I think a lot of it had to do with the 'loudness wars' that started in the late 90s and really came to a head in the 2000s. Everyone wanted their music to stand out when flipping the radio dial, and the best way to do that was to remove as much 'dynamic range' as possible. This meant compressing the entire audio signal so that instead of peaks and valleys of loud and soft, the soft parts were brought up to match the loud parts, resulting in everything just being loud all the time. RHCP on Californication and moreso on Stadium Arcadium were masters of this sound. Stadium Arcadium in particular is one of the worst sounding records of all time. The life of every sound in that record has literally been squashed to death.

As that sound became prevalent, I think the songs themselves started to follow that formula. Why have a song with a lot of soft/loud dynamics (a hallmark of 'grunge' that bands like the Pixies pioneered) if everything is going to come out loud? So you get music that is just unrelentingly 'in your face'. Nickelback comes to mind. Their music sounds very bad. This compression only got worse since then by the way, which I think is in part why many of us think music has gotten worse: the sound of the music has objectively gotten worse.

Remember Tracy Bonham's 'Mother Mother'? That was a great one hit wonder

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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TXAG 05 said:

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RooAg said:

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90's by a good margin overall but my favorite type of rock music didn't take off really until 2000s.

But we can all agree Duran Duran, A-Ha and Toto would kick all their asses.

---

What? Emo crap?

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System of a Down
Foo Fighters
White Stripes
The Killers
The Strokes
Audioslave
Muse
Etc.

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As much as I do think the 90s rock bands clear these bands by quite a bit, this did remind me that despite my pessimistic view of 2000s rock legacy these are unarguably same great bands (except for Audioslave, ugh)

Professor Frick said:

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Remember Tracy Bonham's 'Mother Mother'? That was a great one hit wonder

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She could scream for sure.

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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Well my 13-22 range is 1979-1988 so yeah definitely aligns to my favorite era. Maybe 14-23 which is 1980-1989 for me perfectly in the 80s/ But yeah I imagine it's that 13/14 age for the start of most peoples era.

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We should do some sort of everyone think back to the first song that made you want to turn the radio up as loud as possible and thrash to it as well as the first song that you knew you wanted to dance with a girl to.