• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

In what decade did music peak?

When did music peak?

  • 50s

    Votes: 4 0.7%

  • 60s

    Votes: 37 6.4%

  • 70s

    Votes: 107 18.5%

  • 80s

    Votes: 157 27.2%

  • 90s

    Votes: 187 32.4%

  • 00s

    Votes: 33 5.7%

  • 10s until now

    Votes: 53 9.2%
  • Total voters
    578
Poimandres

Poimandres

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,919
90's for me, because that's when I felt most in touch with popular music. There was a lot of rock in the charts and on the radio, which certainly isn't the case these days. Also several of my all time favourite albums released in that period.

I also have a great appreciation for the 70's, and maybe that would be my fsvourite if I actually lived it. I've been gaining more appreciation for the 80's as my taste diversifies, but it's a bit of a weak link for me. 60's is valid but I prefer the proggier stuff from the 70's (more of a Pink Floyd guy than Beatles, know what I mean?)

Some genres are stronger in different decades, and I appreciate that music has split off into a thousand tangents with always something to find (new or old). I don't want to be one of those people who basically stop listening to new music and only look backwards.
 
curiouscharles

curiouscharles

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,964
I dont like this line of thought. Music will always be changing and always be awesome to people who keep their minds open.

Come at me.
 
latex

latex

Member
Jul 5, 2018
1,414
70s is my favorite. Aged like fine wine (the 80s on the other hand...) and really seems to have a certain quality from each decade before and after it. 70s in general just seems like such a wondrous decade for the arts.
 
zoozilla

zoozilla

Avenger
Jun 9, 2018
527
Japan
Don't know if could name any decade the "peak of music," but I do think right now is the best time as a listener.

We basically have most of the history of recorded music at our fingertips between streaming services and YouTube, plus new artists are releasing music everyday without label interference. Never has music been so accessible.


At the same time...
Border said:
It certainly feels like the last couple decades have basically just been a remix of the 80's and 90's. No new genres or styles have really broken out into the mainstream, though there's obviously plenty of niche genres that have flourished online. But there's nothing new like heavy metal, punk, New Wave, rap, alternative, EDM, all of which started at least 30 years ago.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd agree with this. I think part of it is the lack of new technology.

When was the last technological advancement that made an impact on music? Autotune? That's over 20 years old now.

Back in the day a new synth would come out and people would hear music that was literally impossible before. I don't think we'll have moments like that again.
 
fontguy

fontguy

Avenger
Oct 8, 2018
16,196
Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Wish You Were Here (1975)
The Wall (1979)

It's a bullshit question, but if there has to be an answer...
 
Glimlocker

Glimlocker

Member
Mar 7, 2019
3,628
Empire of the Inland Realm, USA
Music does peak - but it depends on the genre.

Naturally, a specific music genre peaks, then gradually fades out of fashion.

I suppose your favorite decade would depend on what music genres you favor the most and when those specific genres peaked.
 

flyingorion

Member
Dec 4, 2017
360
There have been new genres and I'd argue some have reached mainstream.

Dubstep is a totally new genre that couldn't have existed 30 years ago and a lot of the newest stuff not even 10 years ago. There are legit subgenres of just dubstep such as brostep, melodic dubstep, chillstep, purple, riddim, tearout, deathstep, etc.. Show me something 10 years ago on this level.



Trap in its present stage is super fresh. I know it existed for years in southern hip-hop, however now there's trap metal, hybrid trap, chill trap, and it has seeped into other genre. Find me something 10 years ago that sounded like this



Then there's the whole bubblegum bass/hyperpop/PC music/deconstructed club style that has reached a lot of new places. Artists such as Sophie, Hannah Diamond, and Dorian Electra are phenomenal and making fresh music.



Future bass as a whole and it's kawaii bass subgenre have probably been my favorite genre in the last few years. Show me something that sounded as fresh as this in 2010

 
Ra

Ra

Rap Genius
Moderator
Oct 27, 2017
12,293
Dark Space
Glimlocker said:
Music does peak - but it depends on the genre.

Naturally, a specific music genre peaks, then gradually fades out of fashion.

I suppose your favorite decade would depend on what music genres you favor the most and when those specific genres peaked.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hard facts.

"It keeps getting better and better" is some pie in the sky bullshit, depending on what genre is in discussion.
 
Kanhir

Kanhir

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,899
I would argue that the 70s, spilling into the late 60s and early 80s, were at least an artistic peak for Germany. It's rare that completely homegrown German genres happen, and that happened twice in a row with krautrock and NDW.
(Also, thanks to Kraftwerk, electronic music.)

The late 90s also kicked off the medieval metal genre in Germany, which is the best genre you've never heard.

Real talk though, every decade has good music and plenty of creativity. Especially now, where it's so easy to make music, with so many references proliferated over the internet.
It's like the Rule 34 of music - if you've heard of the genre, there's probably at least three indie artists specialising in it right now.
 
hiredhand

hiredhand

Member
Feb 6, 2019
3,180
The 70's definitely.

You had:
Early punk (The Ramones, Stooges, The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, The Damned...)
The first and often the best albums of major new wave/post rock groups (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Blondie, The Police, Joy Division...)
Great socially conscious soul/funk (Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Sly and the Family Stone...)
Early heavy metal/hard rock (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper...)
Progressive rock (Pink Floyd, Rush, Genesis, King Crimson...)
The career best albums of artists who started in the 60's (The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The Who, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac...)
Reggae (Bob Marley and the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals...)
Disco (Abba, Chic, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees...)
Country (Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Townes Van Zandt, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson...)
Great new singer-songwriters (Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison...)
Birth/popularization of more niche genres like ambient and krautrock
The good Beatles solo albums
 
gogosox82

gogosox82

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,385
Its when ever you start listening to music. For me it was the 90's since that is when i started listening to music.
 
Pulp

Pulp

Member
Nov 4, 2017
3,023
I don't think music ever peaks really but I feel personally that the 70's stands out as one of the more creative decades. At least in prog
 
Chained Prometheus

Chained Prometheus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,759
DrFunk said:
70s

Gave us:

Classic Soul/R&B
Prog Rock
Classic Rock that doesn't fit under prog rock
Parliament/Funkadelic
The emergence of Prince

Hard to say a better decade made better music
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Let's not forget the dawn of metal in the 1970's!

But yeah, I was born in 1993 here. I'm pretty fond of music across the decades, but if I had to pick a single decade as the current "peak" of modern music, it's the 1970's. That initial post-Sgt Pepper era of bands properly focusing on the art of full length albums as an art form instead of just being a collective series of possible radio singles resulted in a megaton of classics across tons of genres of music.

If we're putting aside "what decade gave us the most pop culture hit singles" or "what decade did we grow up with musically" and just look at "Which decade inspired the most experimentation and creativity within its contemporary musicians," I think it has to be the 1970's. At least for now, because music will always be evolving and there's absolutely the chance for a decade of music to surpass what's come before.
 
PHOENIXZERO

PHOENIXZERO

Member
Oct 29, 2017
12,191
I will say that IMO the 60s and 70s (maybe mid-late 50s) were a more exciting time for music than pretty much anything that's come after.
 
Vex

Vex

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,213
Will autotune ever go away? Like everything has it now. It is getting to a point where I am really beginning to wonder if some of these artist can sing.

The funny thing is, when I type in acapella [insert artist here], there is a video of them singing without autotune. And it usually sounds better. For all things that change through out time, I think autotune is the longest running audio "enhancement" being used in music ever. And it is really annoying. It's time to move on to the next fad.
 
myco666

myco666

Member
Oct 26, 2017
853
Fake Europe
Music will never peak. Genres might peak for a moment or maybe forever but music as a whole will not.

Morrison71 said:
I may sound like the old guy yelling at the cloud but it does seem like it is harder to find good music these days. I'm not saying it isn't out there. However, it seems like back in the day the talent made the record labels now it seems like the record labels are generating the talent. But we have technology on our side and anyone can put music out and we all have much greater access to any music we search out.edit=and technology has made us lazy and nobody pays attention to the arts like they use to. I do think music can peak and it has in the 60s.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It has never been easier to find good music due to streaming. Before you had to listen to whatever was in the radio or spend lot of time reading reviews and figuring out if the record was worth your money. And in the case you wanted something more obscure you had to be in the know of where to possibly even get the records. Obviously if you only like the sound of music made in the 60s it is harder to find it now since it isn't played on major radio stations etc. but that happens with everything that isn't popular at the moment.
 
Kanhir

Kanhir

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,899
Chained Prometheus said:
But yeah, I was born in 1993 here. I'm pretty fond of music across the decades, but if I had to pick a single decade as the current "peak" of modern music, it's the 1970's. That initial post-Sgt Pepper era of bands properly focusing on the art of full length albums as an art form instead of just being a collective series of possible radio singles resulted in a megaton of classics across tons of genres of music.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You know concept albums were a thing before the 70s, right? Frank Sinatra was already credited for turning albums into a cohesive piece of work rather than a collection of singles before the Beatles even started recording.
 
Amnixia

Amnixia

â–˛ Legend â–˛
The Fallen
Jan 25, 2018
10,460
fontguy said:
Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Wish You Were Here (1975)
The Wall (1979)

It's a bullshit question, but if there has to be an answer...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I love Pink Floyd, but for every amazing album there was also an "The Carpenters" to off set the amazing music made in the decade.

Answer is, every decade has had some amazing music we look back on with fondness, but there current common denominators aren't (much) worse then the ones in previous decades.
 
Dan

Dan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,967
It's the 1970s. Many of the artists that rose to prominence there were active in the 60s.

Many, many of the artists that contributed into making the 80s, and 90s (and even the 00s) fantastic were heavily influenced by the 1970s.
 
Floex

Floex

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,794
Morrison71 said:
I do think I have a valid point, the 60s was the last great artistic revolution. I would love to have one now and it seems like we should but no time with YouTube or whatever else we are watching/doing on our phone all the time. If anyone can have a genuine argument against that I would love to hear it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

How can you come out with this argument? You haven't even mentioned Bowie
 
lucebuce

lucebuce

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,901
Pakistan
The very concept of music "peaking" is rather redundant. Some genres might go out of style and not see as much innovation but lol @ the entire art form PEAKING.
 
EloKa

EloKa

GSP
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,909
From the perspective of musical theory or craftmanship skill it's probably somewhere around the 70s while the "10s until now" Pop is probably the weakest.
Doesn't mean that the current music is necessarily the worst tho.
 
SonofDonCD

SonofDonCD

Member
Oct 26, 2017
394
This is such a false concept.

Music is always evolving, changing, and yet in many ways staying the same. Even though western harmony only allows us 12 distinct tones, only so many keys and time signatures (within reason) and our human brains really resonate with harmonic structures resolving in certain ways, we still have so many options for how to mix and match all of the tools in our trade. So many that are not being explored within the very narrow purview of mainstream music, which itself is just a very small sliver of the amount of music that is being created at any given time. Do you have any concept of how many different genres and styles of music there is (I'm sure there's no way any one of us here in this thread has heard every kind of music there is in the world)? How many millions of musicians are out there doing their thing? There are so many creative people out there creating every day, incorporating the things we love from the past and making something entirely their own. So long as we have the means, this will never stop happening.

If you're asking which decade had the best mainstream music, then ask that specific question. It's one that I think has merit, and can create a great discussion. But thinking that music has peaked in any way; that music (not just a certain kind of music, but music as an art form) can never possibly be better than at some random time in the past, is such a bizarre thought to have. It's honestly kinda insulting to me to think that.
 
Fugu

Fugu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,748
My undergraduate degree is in jazz performance (yes, you can get an undergraduate degree in jazz performance), so that really colors things for me, but here goes.

First, if I look at only jazz I think the only two choices are the 50s and the 60s. That is both the case in the sense that subjectively most of my favorite jazz comes from those decades and in that I think most jazz historians would agree that the peak of jazz in every sense except perhaps commercially occurred somewhere around 1959. I'd give the edge to the 50s, though, because I feel that the decade as a whole has a lot more to offer and in a rather straightforward way more of my favorite albums were released in the 50s.

If I look at all of the music I like, it's more difficult. I don't enjoy a lot of mainstream music, and nearly all of what I do enjoy comes from the early nineties, so there's that. The nineties is also when the grip of the major labels on music production more generally started to loosen. The fact that that grip was only dislodged completely in the 2000s has to be balanced against the fact that it was also probably the crappiest decade to be an up-and-coming artist for other reasons, so even though a lot of music that I like was released in the 2000s I don't think it's a serious contender. Also, in the 2000s and 2010s mainstream music basically loses me completely. The case for the 60s gets better than it already was because it's also the peak of artistry in pop music, but so too does the case for the 50s. The 70s wasn't an altogether bad decade for music, but the 80s almost certainly was - the less said about that, the better.

I'd probably still pick the 50s, and I am indeed one of the four people that voted for it in this poll.

The "music is continually getting better" argument is a copout - we're not talking about the culmination of all music during that time (as that would be a very easy question to answer), we're talking about the music released in that decade. Also, polls like this generally just reflect the powerful influence of recency bias and the lack of curiosity that people have towards art that was released before they became aware enough to appreciate it.
 
Nox Potens

Nox Potens

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
844
Music does not peak. It constantly evolves and changes shape. Individual genres may have peaks, but to say that music as a whole does is asinine.
 
Aldo

Aldo

Member
Mar 19, 2019
1,745
Late 60s-early 70s when the industrial intetest in "youth culture" was at its peak (they were not wrong, there were a shitton of young people compared to now... Well you know the baby boom). And today, since almost nobody can eat with it but basically anybody can make it and release it to the entire world.
 
White Glint

White Glint

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,617
Ummet Ozcan x PollyAnna - Starchild released in 2018 so definitely not the 2010s. Fucking thing triggers a migraine every time it comes on the radio at work which people insist is set to "the most banger station available"
 
myco666

myco666

Member
Oct 26, 2017
853
Fake Europe
Fugu said:
My undergraduate degree is in jazz performance (yes, you can get an undergraduate degree in jazz performance), so that really colors things for me, but here goes.

First, if I look at only jazz I think the only two choices are the 50s and the 60s. That is both the case in the sense that subjectively most of my favorite jazz comes from those decades and in that I think most jazz historians would agree that the peak of jazz in every sense except perhaps commercially occurred somewhere around 1959. I'd give the edge to the 50s, though, because I feel that the decade as a whole has a lot more to offer and in a rather straightforward way more of my favorite albums were released in the 50s.

If I look at all of the music I like, it's more difficult. I don't enjoy a lot of mainstream music, and nearly all of what I do enjoy comes from the early nineties, so there's that. The nineties is also when the grip of the major labels on music production more generally started to loosen. The fact that that grip was only dislodged completely in the 2000s has to be balanced against the fact that it was also probably the crappiest decade to be an up-and-coming artist for other reasons, so even though a lot of music that I like was released in the 2000s I don't think it's a serious contender. Also, in the 2000s and 2010s mainstream music basically loses me completely. The case for the 60s gets better than it already was because it's also the peak of artistry in pop music, but so too does the case for the 50s. The 70s wasn't an altogether bad decade for music, but the 80s almost certainly was - the less said about that, the better.

I'd probably still pick the 50s, and I am indeed one of the four people that voted for it in this poll.

The "music is continually getting better" argument is a copout - we're not talking about the culmination of all music during that time (as that would be a very easy question to answer), we're talking about the music released in that decade. Also, polls like this generally just reflect the powerful influence of recency bias and the lack of curiosity that people have towards art that was released before they became aware enough to appreciate it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't really understand the bolded part.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.