What are your favourite decades for music?

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Best musical decade?

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AGinAg (37)

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Since the 10s is now long passed, what were favourite musical decades? And WHY?

Also who your faves from each decade?

It's a multi choice poll. Ooh.


:)
 
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I've voted for the 1970s along with the rest because of ABBA, Blondie and disco. Obviously I wasn't there and I'm aware there was a ton of shit, but ABBA!
 
Nothing like the 90s for me, especially with the 90s dance revival that’s been happening for the last however many years

it’s hard to pick earlier decades over the ones when I was alive though
 
The 00s were amazing too. Trance, turn of the century pop and RnB, the rise of the big divas and the explosion of electro pop at the tail end of the decade.

I'd say 90s were my fave however. 80s were of course the host of much joy.
 
70s, 80s, and 90s - what a run!

ABBA, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Joni for the 70s.
Too many to count from the 80s, just the whole sound, the amazing one hit wonders, and Belinda obviously.
And then the Banshees in the 90s, PJ, Tori, Alanis.
 
for synthpop, electropop, alt-pop and dance music and r&b - the 10s
for house music, chilled/ambient pop, lush r&b, female-fronted rock and singer-songwriter pop - the 90s

there aren't many moods these two decades don't cover. then for the giddy euphoria of synthesizers and drum machines and five-minute epics, the 80s, and for disco/funk, the 70s.

it's quite rare for me to dip into music from the 00s these days I think, except for iconic albums by the big pop girls. I just don't feel it brought much in the way of its own sound and I don't have much nostalgia for that time.
 
I guess if I was going to be the typical Moopy “I will shun the options and make my own because I’m so different”, my favourite decade was 1994-2003
 
It comes down to which music you grew up with and which period you were mostly into music. Sometime halfway through 00’s I lost interest in a lot of the mainstream pop. The turn of the decade was good but then the mid-10’s were awful and I lost almost all interest.

So basically, the 90’s mostly, and the 80’s.
 
I was tempted to go for 60s as well, but I have to accept that my nostalgia is skewed by only remembering the good stuff. I'm sure if I was exposed to the shit stuff (like we have on old totp with the 70s, 80s and now 90s), then I'm sure it would suffer.

I always tend to forget how the first half of the 70s is pretty shit on the whole, even if the last few years is possibly my favourite period ever. The 80s is definitely my favourite decade overall.
 
I haven't voted for the '50s because I don't really know enough but certainly, I have no real love for early rock 'n' roll. Recording technology was still experimental and the only recordings from the era that sound good are jazz and classical because they were considered "serious" music and, therefore, the decent mics and the proper tape was used etc. Jazz was beginning to get interesting but it was the 60s where it went truly wild and had that almost unparalleled accelerated trajectory.

I haven't voted for the 70s because it seems to have been pretty grim right up until '78/'79 when post-punk (i.e The Fall, Wire, The Slits) and early synth pop (ie the original Human League, Cabaret Voltaire) were kicking in and music went absolutely wild. So, yes the 70s had Bowie and Bob Marley and Abba but I think I'd have found it a bit grim had I been born 10 years earlier and therefore fully conscious throughout.

I haven't voted for the 00s because I remember them being really quite shit. It's no wonder I fell into such a deep experimental hole, only to come up gasping when Marina & The Diamonds dropped "Mowgli's Road" in '09. All that landfill indie, all that squeaky pop, all that X-Factor shit. Thank God The Fall got it together in '03 and bossed the rest of that decade.
 
I have voted for the 60s because jazz caught fire, pop became truly ambitious (and had eaten itself by '69), soul became overtly socially conscious, the art movements and experimenters began to document their work and we have the birth of free improvisation. If that latter seems unimportant, free-improvisation has, at its centre, the removal of the ego from music and centres the collective. As such it was a necessary corrective to the rampant self-indulgence that would stifle music so badly in the '70s.*

(* Question - did Bowie get away with it by constructing multiple Bowies, thus giving himself a get-out clause every time he got out of control i.e. firing the Spiders From Mars onstage because Ziggy was over, firing the more vocal elements of his unhappy band in order to become "The Thin White Duke", chucking that image when his cocaine use had him spouting garbage in interviews and sneaking off to Berlin and Switzerland to make records that were strewn with uninhabitable instrumentals etc etc)
 
I have vote for the 80s because it was so fertile - post-punk showed that the means of production were in the hands of the workers and a glorious period of DIY and independent label success followed. New Order were top 5 on Factory, The Smiths top 10 on Rough Trade and PWL completely owned the pop charts for 3 years from 87. As much as most of those PWL record were, to my ears, gash, they nonetheless absolutely owned pop music and were key players in some major incidents that showcased the trickery behind the charts*. The club culture completely transformed music, something which began to pay off properly in the 90's. The music industry began to decentralise from London. By the end of the 80s, it had soured; indie labels were getting fed up being seen as feeders for majors and began to fold, many going under completely when a major distributor, Rough Trade, got into trouble.

*I;m referring to them blocking the sale of MARRS over a sample to keep Rick Astley at No 1 and their pressing plant not pressing "Especially For You" at Xmas because they used EMI and wanted Cliff at #1.
 
I have voted for the 90s because it was absolutely bonkers. The North rose again with the fall-out from the initial Madchester and club explosions, the bloated rawk industry was served redundancy overnight by Nirvana and grunge, Riot Grrrl was short-lived but its reverberations have proved loud and enduring. Britpop was, at its best, hugely colourful and occasionally subversive, Spice Girls turned pop music on its head and created a huge pop explosion that the industry struggled to deal with and then the internet came along and only David Bowie seemed to think it was a good thing.
 
1. The 2000s - Maybe not objectively the best, but what I am most nostalgic for. My favorite singers were releasing my favorite music in that decade (Girls Aloud, SEB, Kylie, Madonna, Sugababes)

2. The 90s - I don't THINK I really remember much but a few things from the time, but I have discovered so much that I love from this decade, especially dance music.

3. The 2010s - The decade I discovered so much earlier music that I now love. Also includes a lot of music I love, but also I have less time for the average song than I did in the 2000s

4. The 80s - Don't remember it at all, but LOVE the synthpop/SAW/italodisco etc.
 
I have voted for the 10s because it started to get interesting again. The money was falling out of music rapidly and the times were harsh. For people like me, the decade felt similar to post-punk. Solo artists became more common that bands because bands are too expensive and you can be the band yourself anyway. Bandcamp has become the hub with bands now sustaining themselves through direct sales and direct connections to their fans: subscriptions and Patreon keep people ticking over. There's no scenes, phases or fads any more; the internet has made the turnaround of anything incredibly fast.
Out in the mainstream, the struggle was real. Bands could only earn a decent crust by touring due to the devaluation of recorded music and thus, ticket prices skyrocketed, creating a weird micro-economy where £80 for an evening's entertainment became reasonable. The 10s is where artists regained control of themselves; many followed Radiohead's example and self-released albums in the first instance - in the ensuing years since "In Rainbows", the time from announcement to availability of an album has, in many cases, shrunk to nothing at all. Whilst Radiohead did it because they didn't have a label and didn't want the album leaked, in the hands of the bigger industry, it became the ultimate tactic for instant fan engagement, taken to its inevitable conclusion when Beyonce released not just an album but videos for every track on that album with no notice at all. Whilst the trend began in the 00s, it was in the '10s that music went from being "released" to being "dropped". Now a release strategy is as important as the release.
There are no more trends, no more eras - culture is too disparate. But, in turn, we have access to the music of more people and a greater diversity of voices than ever. That's the joy of the 10s as a decade, the breadth, the depth...things that would have existed on 500 7" singles in one state of the US is now up there for everyone. There's gold in them thar hills, just grab a decent sifter and come join us.
 
@santaphone Those write ups are amazing! Really helps contextualize music eras/scenes I don't know much about. It also makes me so glad I am alive NOW, when I have access to so much more music. I probably never would have heard much of my favorite music from the 80s/90s if I was an adult then
 
RJN said:
@santaphone Those write ups are amazing! Really helps contextualize music eras/scenes I don't know much about. It also makes me so glad I am alive NOW, when I have access to so much more music. I probably never would have heard much of my favorite music from the 80s/90s if I was an adult then
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Well, this is it - arguably, the best time for music is always "now" because you have what's current and what happened before. Curatorship is an issue; you never have absolutely everything but then, you can't listen to absolutely everything. In some ways, the internet has created an unnavigable plethora. In the early 90s, a 15 minute rummage in a shop would pull up two or three albums I'd be interested in having from which I'd be choosing one. Now, 15 minutes on Bandcamp and I can have a 30 album wishlist without too much pause. It creates a different type of engagement but that doesn't make it less meaningful.
 
santaphone said:
Now, 15 minutes on Bandcamp and I can have a 30 album wishlist without too much pause.
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Add this to all the books and tv shows and movies (and video games for those into that) and it can be overwhelming. There is just more content than one person can ever experience
 
santaphone said:
I;m referring to them blocking the sale of MARRS over a sample to keep Rick Astley at No 1 and their pressing plant not pressing "Especially For You" at Xmas because they used EMI and wanted Cliff at #1.
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I have never heard any of this!
 
Ag said:
I have never heard any of this!
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The remix of the MARRS record - which is the version with all the samples that everyone knows - had a sample from SAW's "Roadblock". The etiquette at the time was not to injunct over samples but PWL went against that because Rick Astley was number one and the MARRS record was their main challenger. So Waterman injuncted. As a result, the popular version of the song couldn't be sold for most of the week and Astley got a 4th (or whatever) week at #1. MARRS were also on an indie label, 4AD. So if you ever wanted to know why the indie label industry continually refused to acknowledge PWL, now you do. No, it wasn't (just) musical snobbery.

I thought the Cliff story was quite well known but PWL used EMI pressing plant and were heading for Xmas #1 with "Especially For You". Main competitor, Cliff. Who was on EMI. Hence the shortage of available copies of "Especially For You" in the pre-Xmas week; EMI naturally prioritised pressing their own artist's record and PWL, whilst understandably furious, couldn't prove anything.

So there you go: Pete Waterman being both the instigator and recipient of music industry dirty tricks. Instant karma? Sort of.
 
Just looked on Mike Stock's twitter. Last two retweets are regarding 30,000 stolen Trump votes and a Marine Le Pen quote. Cunt.

At least Pete just comes across as an embarrassing old uncle and then will go and play with his train set in the loft.
 
Ag said:
Pete Waterman is alas an absolute bellend.
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In 1997, Pete Waterman is in PWL Studios and gets a call from the engineers. They wouldn't normally bother him but the guy that's in is an absolute nightmare, turning dials to extreme levels without realising how much damage he could do, insisting on impossible edits, playing wonky cassettes in a mic and then complaining it sounds shit...all sorts. Bugger can't even sing. Can Pete come down and use a bit of his influence to sort this prick out, sort of "oi, this is my gaff, stop fannying about". Pete reckons this is, at minimum worth a look. He'll pop down.

He opens the door. Bids the customer a polite howdy and receives one in return. Pete ushers over the engineer, says to him "that's Mark E Smith, you do whatever he fucking tells you" and leaves.

So yes, a bellend but I struggle with "absolute" because of this tale.
 
The '60s and the '90s.

The '60s, my God, imperial Motown, soul, R&B - where to begin. In fact as I type this post 15/10 song "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass is playing.
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The '90s was probably the most versatile decade of popular music - every genre was in vogue at one point, and if I look at my music collection I have more from the '90s than any other.
 
The 90s for me but instinctively I thought the 80s. 90s had just so many great indie and grunge bands, the emergence en masse of great female singer-songwriter types of which it seemed the press had a sexist approach that only one or two were tolerable in the past and of course the club scene and dance music were amazing.
 
Despite my answer in the poll, the best is now, since we have unlimited access to the music of every decade
 
We were talking about how amazing it was to come of age in the 90s in the UK. We literally peaked as a country culturally, everything about the decade was amazing and everyone was so fucking off their tits doing it. Unbelievable.
 
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