Best Decade for Music Since 1900 – The Poll

I honestly have no idea, and neither do you, probably.

There was this sort-of-related poll earlier this year: Where is your cut-off point?

Anyway, write-in vote for the 2020s.

I almost included them.

Side poll: How many people did not pick the decade where they turned 18 or so?

Not many. Definitely not me.

i didnt

I'll be mulling this one over for a while, but I definitely won't be voting for the noughties.

I was 18 in the 2000s and that would be like 4th or 5th down for me. I picked 1970s.

Maybe a related predictor is "What music were you listening to the most when you were 18?"

Yeah, that makes more sense.

1970s and 1990s are both among the options I'm seriously contemplating.

Voted for the '70s (yes, turned 18 in 1979; I think it's more controlled by when you're 12-14, though), although objectively the '60s were probably better.

'70s, without question. I have playlists for my favorite music by year and, without fail, the ones from at least like '71 to '74 just make me drop my jaw every time I put them on. Not just a stunningly-high level of quality but such a diversity of high-quality music across genres.

And I was born towards the end of the '70s and didn't encounter much of this stuff until much later, so my opinion is untainted by the nostalgia that informs my emotional high-water mark of, say, the 1982-1992 period.

I was a late bloomer when it came to really diving head first into music discovery. My teen years spanned from 1989 - 1999, but the 90's may be my least favorite decades.

*of the decades...

My actual favourite is probably the 2010s but it would be dereliction of duty to not vote 90s here so

surprised myself a little by voting 1980s - but if I had to pick only one decade's output it'd probably be that one

the 90s was "my" decade and I find it hard to feel particularly moved by it

Very curious to see who will be voting for the pre-1960s (other than Camaraderie at Arms Length, of course).

I'm definitely considering the 1900s and 1910s for classical music alone.

Hard disagree with the "when you turned 18" set.

It's more like 13-15.

gonna stand up for the 80s here, cause i like to have fun

Literally impossible.

I won't blame anyone who sits this one out for precisely that reason.

80s baby voting 80s.

Tempted to vote for the '50s as the decade when electronic music became properly feasible (you could make an argument for this being earlier, though). Too many good records scattered over the decades for me to vote solely on what records came out.

1910s-- Stravinsky (the best stuff), Elgar, Mahler (9 before he died), Bartok, Prokofiev, Joplin, ragtime on the downswing, stride on the upswing, Schoenberg (5 pieces, Pierrot, Nacht), Satie, Ives (Concord Sonata, 4th symphony), Webern, Kreisler and Caruso make recordings, Nielsen, Ravel, calypso gets exported exported, Sibelius, first wave of jazz, R. Strauss, early hits for Gerswhin, Berlin and Porter.

Tbh '70s is a strong contender just on records (I was not born in the '70s so this would be more along jmm's thing of "What music were you listening to the most when you were 18?" rather than "in what decade were you 18?")

the 60s had the beatles AND the rolling stones, while the 70s just had the rolling stones. so it's gotta be the 60s.

okay, boomer

1910s vs 1960s vs 1970s

austin, i was pretending to be a boomer. i do love those beatles and rolling stones though, i admit

(ahem) i said

OKAY.

BOOMER.

wait a second

WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME

I swear on the beatles...

10's or 70's...

fgti unsurprisingly knows what's up.

I voted 40s solely for Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, one of my favorite pieces of music ever but FGTI has me thinking I should have gone for the teens.

60s were prob the best, really-- folk, jazz, bossanova, Stockhausen, country, multi-track recording-- but considering the garishness of "The Beatles" and "Beach Boys" and "Woodstock"? buncha strikes against it, too

for someone who Loves Music, I’m a little embarrassed about my ignorance of pre-50s and post-00s. that said, 70s with no hesitation.

I need to think about whether to vote from a rock or a jazz angle.

For jazz it's 1960s without question, though it really starts in 1959 (Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, The Shape of Jazz to Come, Mingus Ah Um).

From a rock perspective I'd vote 1970s, though again, that's really about 1969-75, not the whole decade.

Struggling with this because my answer is "Kraftwerk" but the problem is, the decade where Kraftwerk did most of their groundbreaking work was the 70s, though their influence wasn't properly felt until the 80s when techno really took off but fuck voting for the 80s.

The 70s is one of those decades where the agreed historical narrative is not especially interesting and then you take a closer look and realise quite how much incredible, forward-looking music was happening at once, pretty much all over the place and in all genres, and it's one of the most incredible decades (if not the best decade) for black music.

The 1910s is one of the most astonishingly fertile periods of all for orchestral music, so that's up there.

There's an odd in-between decade (say, 1987-94) which represents one of the most explosive periods of creativity and transformation in the history of pop, probably since the 60s, but that's not easily reducible to an option in this poll. But then again the 60s that exists in the popular imagination is only really the late 60s.

The only one it definitely isn't is the 1940s and even then there are some undisputable masterpieces in there.

I mean if I was voting on the basis of Kraftwerk alone I would unquestionably associate them with the 70s because that's the decade that also gives you Can and Neu! and kosmiche synth stuff like Klaus Schulze, it all feels of a piece really.

The only one it definitely isn't is the 1940s and even then there are some undisputable masterpieces in there.

Agreed. Quite the contrast with the other decade defined by a World War.

The poll results will at least give a good distribution of the ages of ILM posters.

Still waiting for the 'This is the thread for ILXors in their 90s' thread.

Yeah, all those ILMers who were teenagers in the 1910s!

The 70s is one of those decades where the agreed historical narrative is not especially interesting and then you take a closer look and realise quite how much incredible, forward-looking music was happening at once, pretty much all over the place and in all genres, and it's one of the most incredible decades (if not the best decade) for black music.

This. You could reduce the '70s to just the r&b/soul/funk/jazz released during that decade and my vote would probably still be for the '70s. It is a seemingly bottomless well, filled with mostly astounding work.

> you take a closer look and realise quite how much incredible, forward-looking music was happening at once,

This is what I came to realize too about the 70s. There was just so much money and drugs getting poured into making records, and artists were allowed three or four flops to find their footing. Recording technology hit a sweet spot of analog creativity, before digital made *anything* possible. So many people were buying records, independent and imported labels started becoming widely available. Every decade has timeless peaks, but the 70s has a dynamism that's unmatched.

I turned 18 in the 2000s, was listening to the 90s the most at that time, and yet I still ended up voting for the 70s.

Also I think not being alive in the 70s, makes it easier for me to ignore a lot of the crap that was being pushed out in that decade.

I listen to boatloads of 50s rockabilly, hillbilly, western swing, country-western, blues, R&B, and jazz, and I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I find new things I love pretty much weekly.

That said, I can't deny the decade that starts with Grand Funk Live (my first album) and ends with The B-52's debut (one of my most influential.) 70s it is.

you can take Big Beat from my warm, sweaty hands

kiss and it's a sin and once in a lifetime and into the groove and don't change and, and especially take on me and driver 8 and love is a stranger (best song ever)are the best songs ever, and also true faith and buffalo stance are the best songs ever. her heels tall, bikini small, she said she likes the ocean. unimpeachable. like a prayer! best song ever. love my way! pump up the goddam volume! loving would be easier if your colors were like my dreams. ronnie, bobby, ricky and mike, if i love a girl who cares what decade you like. buffalo stance is probably the best song ever. or strangelove, that's the best song ever. back to life! best song ever, no contest.

la di da di! best song ever! there, i said it. whatcho got 60s, 8 miles high? ok, that's a tie. the freaks come out at night vs. these boots are made for walkin', tough choice for a tie breaker.

if this were a straight up POP! poll, it'd be all 80s, girl you know it's true. that's the dumbest song ever and i get sick to my stomach with excitement when i hear that intro. maybe there's no ahistorical, non-subjective approach to this. like when i hear 50s bebop or country thing i think those are the best things, after modern conveniences like personal transport and in-house electricity.

otoh, i watched alla the kids react videos and i came to the same conclusion abt the 70s being the overall winner. those damn kids know NOTHING about anything but the 70s elicited the best reactions, even over stuff that eventuated during their lifetimes. everything from the 70s seemed like some kind of high point of epic songcraftfullness. that one dude, brandon, actually teared up when they played imagine. he'd never heard it before. that's a solid vote for the 70s.

i forgot close to me, best song ever after in between days.

the 70s had brick house and papa was a rolling stone and fly like an eagle but the 80s had silent morning. silent morning, the universally acclaimed best song of all time! your body so tender, you got me
sighing in sweet surrender. you can do away with all other extant musics, as far as i care.

rooftop dancing, the insouciant flipping away of a lit cigarette! what else about the human condition is there to say in all of the cultural imprint of our existence, i query? if i had to posit a best song ever, it would be this, the magic i feel in your kiss. a different corner by george michael would be a close second.

i didn't know if hammering so hard by squirrel bait was officially pop so i didn't choose that over different corner. maybe green eyes counts. anyways, still 80s as favorite.

Happy to see that no decade was utterly snubbed.
― pomenitul, Sunday, December 20, 2020 5:50 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's one way of interpreting 89 votes for the 70-80s against 11 for the 00s-10s.

tied for no. one on the all-time greatest pop songs ever are word up and how soon is now and the look of love, which is stand-alone the best song ever. no. two might be it's my life or i got you, after welcome to the jungle, which is clearly the no. one pop song of all time, no contest.

kiss and it's a sin and once in a lifetime and into the groove and don't change and, and especially take on me and driver 8 and love is a stranger (best song ever)are the best songs ever, and also true faith and buffalo stance are the best songs ever. her heels tall, bikini small, she said she likes the ocean. unimpeachable. like a prayer! best song ever. love my way! pump up the goddam volume! loving would be easier if your colors were like my dreams. ronnie, bobby, ricky and mike, if i love a girl who cares what decade you like. buffalo stance is probably the best song ever. or strangelove, that's the best song ever. back to life! best song ever, no contest.

otm

particularly "Love Is A Stranger", best song ever. Ever!

I'd be interested as to which decade would win a poll for best for music videos tbh (I'd rank them 10s > 80s > 00s > 90s)

"Happy to see that no decade was utterly snubbed."

That's one way of interpreting 89 votes for the 70-80s against 11 for the 00s-10s.

A 100% accurate way of interpreting something is a pretty good way to interpret it tbf.

Voted 90s mainly because of the golden age of rap and because of jungle, garage and Nirvana. Could easily have gone 80s tho.

early decades shortchanged for many reasons: too much unrecorded or poorly recorded stuff + pop crit assumption that everything interesting started in the 60s (50s if you’re lucky) + relative lack of interest in “classical” music which peaked in those decades afaic

apart from that 2010s relatively too low, not enough kids on here. 60s-90s good but not this much better than everything else unless you grew up in them & have too many feels about it. otoh I got into music in the 00s & still think that wasn’t too great as a whole- in fact the late 00s may be the worst period ever in terms of what music press & hipsters were raving about

I'd be interested as to which decade would win a poll for best for music videos tbh (I'd rank them 10s > 80s > 00s > 90s)

The 1940s!

Trouble with decades is they don't tally up very well with shifts in music, would suggest these as roughly decade-sized periods which work better:

1905-1916
1917-1925
1926-1931
1932-1940
1941-1952
1953-1961
1962-1971
1972-1983
1984-1993
1994-2003(?) Not sure how to divide after this point.

1932-1940
1941-1952
1953-1961
1962-1971
1972-1983

These are mostly 1-2 years off from standard decades. What advantages do you see to these divisions?

1932-1940 is depression / swing / big bands / loads of labels from 20s closed / hollywood musicals
1941-1952 is jump blues / be bop / weird wartime & post-war hinterland
1953-1961 is og rock & roll / Brill Building / do wop
1962-1971 is The Sixties, 70/71 seems very much to belong in this era
1972-1983 is an odd one, there's definitely a shift around 72 and another in 84, but there are also big shifts round 76 and 80, guess this is why people are so keen on this era.

makes better sense to think of the post-wwii decades as if they start on the “5” imo

1962-1971 is The Sixties, 70/71 seems very much to belong in this era

That's interesting. Obv, these divisions are always a bit arbitrary but I do feel like there was a p noticeable shift esp in rock at this point, obv w Sabbath/Purple/Zep albums but also early prog and funk. The emergence of 16- and 24-track recording consoles made a p noticeable difference, probably. xp yeah, I would just as soon group second half of the 60s with first half of the 70s as group 70/71 with early 60s.

60s / 70s is tricky, there is definitely a big shift in 63, and another in 66, maybe one more in 69, however 60/61/62 definitely do not belong with the rest of the 60s.

1953-1961 is og rock & roll / Brill Building / do wop
1962-1971 is The Sixties, 70/71 seems very much to belong in this era

I would make the split at the British Invasion (‘64)? Girl groups etc. didn’t start to decline until then.

(of course this is a US-centric view, but you mentioned Brill Bldg)

Would have put British invasion at 63, checking it out though Feb 64 is indeed the moment.

I would do something like:

1953-1963
1964-1976 (the Long, Boring Decade, lol)
1977-1987
1988-1997
1998- ...I dunno

morrisp has the right idea, thought I'd probably go with:

1954-1963
1964-1972
1973-1981
1982-1989
1990-1997

starting to think decades might be arbitrary artificial constructs we use to divide a whole bunch of stuff happening into digestible chunks to which the appropriate culturally relevant narratives can be attached to give the impression that it actually all means something man

just for rationale:

1954-1963 would encompass pre-Beatles rock and modern jazz (hard bop, birth of free jazz, etc.), the great beginning of the electric (Chicago) blues era, mainstream vocal pop mature into a long-playing art form (Frank Sinatra's Capitol albums are from this era), and traditional country's last great era before it would perpetually struggle against industry pressure to reshape it as mainstream pop

1964-1971 goes through more changes than any other, but you're still dealing with many the same core figures - '60s rock and R&B dominates this era (Beatles, Dylan, James Brown, Motown, Stax/Volt, Stones, etc.) Also the last major era of jazz with the great avant-garde and free jazz-inspired work (Coleman and Coltrane's acolytes along with Coltrane's last great records, Miles Davis's last great quintet) and the first great (and nearly the only great) fusion records. Also the Velvets, Stooges, etc. lay the groundwork for the future. Glam rock straddles the end of this era and the next.

1972-1981 mainly for the evolution of dance and punk. Proto-punk music is boiled down to the New York Dolls and the belated release of the Modern Lovers (even the Stooges' Raw Power - they distill out the free jazz and funk inspirations on Fun House). From there it's the Ramones, the CBGB scene and then punk in the UK, elsewhere in the US, "New Wave," etc. Before that glam rock takes full flight as do other new sounds from older sources like Big Star. Motown and Memphis Soul mature into different sounds (see Stevie Wonder and Al Green's great run of albums). And both disco and reggae became a huge part of Western music. Prince and the birth of hip-hop straddles the end of this era and the next.

1982-1989 Prince's era, when he breaks through into stardom. He and Michael Jackson probably do more than anyone to re-shape pop music. Hip-hop seems more and more like the beginning of something much larger than a novelty with the major early records of Grandmaster Flash then Run-DMC. This is followed by the "golden era" with Public Enemy and others making dense, collage-like masterpieces that for most are legally and financially impossible to create nowadays. The American underground (indie) scene pops up across the country. Maybe more than any other era, rock's lumped into mainstream pop - and as a monstrous stadium-filling commodity, pop reaches its peak (Springsteen, U2, Madonna, Van Halen, the Police, etc.)

1990-1997 The alternative rock explosion - the whole movement dominates the era. Hip-hop branches off into two directions, with gangsta rap attaining far more commercial success.

1998 - ? the internet arrives in full. things get worse

How do you divide the 2000s from the 2010s? Feels to me like around 2012 or 2013 is when the break comes (based on certain artists/albums coming out), but I wasn’t paying close enough attn.

I get that everyone hates the late 90s because of post-grunge, big beat and the like, but several of my favourite albums of all time were released in 97 and 98 (OK Computer, Homogenic, Aquemini, Mezzanine, Music Has the Right to Children, Obscura, Mark Hollis, LP5, Moon Safari, The Circle Maker, Moon Pix, Permutation, etc.). I don't much care for 99, though, that much is true.

Also the rise of Max Martin pop, Timbaland r&b,
etc.

(as good things, for the avoidance of doubt)

late 00s/early 10s is a bizarre liminal zone that probably needs its own section

I get that everyone hates the late 90s because of post-grunge, big beat and the like, but several of my favourite albums of all time were released in 97 and 98 (OK Computer, Homogenic, Aquemini, Mezzanine, Music Has the Right to Children, Obscura, Mark Hollis, LP5, Moon Safari, The Circle Maker, Moon Pix, Permutation, etc.). I don't much care for 99, though, that much is true.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 20, 2020 11:21 AM

agree, 97 and 98 were great

90s as a whole was pretty amazing

I know this is ultimately a silly exercise, still feel it's an interesting thing to explore. it's on my mind right now as I've just started listening to 1941 and am a bit blown away - I was ready for these sudden gear-changes in 1917, 1920, 1927, etc. but nobody mentioned that suddenly jump blues would be everywhere in 41. Going to be interesting seeing where the other lurches forwards happen.

Jazz alone was very volatile in the '40s. The war, economic factors (e.g. the cost of keeping a big band/orchestra together), the recording strike in response to the massive change in how people consume music, and that's before you even get to the big bang of bebop.

Think the ASCAP boycott is the vital factor in 1941, the recording strike is coming up next year, will be interesting to see how that affects things.

2020 2:15 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I get that everyone hates the late 90s because of post-grunge, big beat and the like, but several of my favourite albums of all time were released in 97 and 98 (OK Computer, Homogenic, Aquemini, Mezzanine, Music Has the Right to Children, Obscura, Mark Hollis, LP5, Moon Safari, The Circle Maker, Moon Pix, Permutation, etc.). I don't much care for 99, though, that much is true.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 20, 2020 2:21 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also the rise of Max Martin pop, Timbaland r&b,
etc.

― good karma, my aesthetic (morrisp), Sunday, December 20, 2020 2:27 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

1996-1999 were my formative years, I guess. Not a lot of overlap between pom's favorites and mine apart from BoC. But it's so weird to me that anyone would see it as a "post-grunge" era. If I'm going to define that period, and I'm reasonably sure that wouldn't be a good idea, I'd probably do so in terms of 'Japanification'.

There were obvious, instant classic albums in 1997... Reading over the EOY lists in 98 I was honestly surprised by the lack of consensus. If there was any consensus, it was something like "lots of good stuff, but nothing that really stands out as the AOTY". (Most of my own favorite releases of 1998 had been singles.)

1999 might actually be my favorite, though- perhaps in a way that's tough to quantify with a list. It was more the general tone and tenor of Disneyland meets Bladerunner, the gaudiness of it. Which is surely what others find offputting. I suspect morrisp gets it but who knows.

Those elements are present in the previous years for sure, but tempered more by a weight of nostalgia that's absent in a lot of things from 99.

There must be, like, a ton of nauseating discourse about Jamiroquai's US VMA as the antitodte to the penis-socked morons of 1993.

That was pretty much my experience tho

Polystar, Trattoria discographies basically = Acid Jazz

Damn, 60's and 10's were snubbed!

I remember when people were complaining about how dire the late '90s were as it was happening. OutKast was the biggest bright spot for me, some Wu-Tang albums too, while Radiohead, Wilco and the Flaming Lips were all peaking. There was plenty of great music, but a lot of it felt more marginalized than before. Mainstream pop seemed to get bigger (with albums selling far more than a million copies in the first week) yet less interesting than ever before.

Re: 1999, The Soft Bulletin, Play, Summerteeth and 69 Love Songs all dropped that year, and they kind of defined what the best stuff at the end of the decade sounded like to me: lush, shiny, tuneful and eccentric pop. Kind of an appropriate high before everything went to hell (dot com bust, Bush II, 9/11, the Iraq War, etc.)

*with album after album selling far more than TWO million copies in the first week....crazy how much bigger the business was.

Rock felt kind of exhausted in ‘99, on both the indie and major-label levels (even 69 Love Songs, the year’s magnum opus, came off as the culmination of something that group had been building toward for a while; playing lots of those songs out in live shows, before finally recording the album). The pop landscape was more interesting, but it definitely felt like a big shift was happening.

remember 1999 being the year of Eureka, Musick to Play in the Dark, Goodbye 20th Century

The late 90s for me were actually beneficial because it's when I spent a lot of time digging up and learning about old music, or at least not-contemporary music. It's when I got into all kinds of things I still love 20+ years later. Now, what drove me to that path is all the midwest Jade Tree emo and the Mogwai-adjacent "post rock" people were fucking crazy about, all of which I still hate (and that's in addition to everything else bad that's been mentioned upthread). I didn't mind a fair amount of big beat and the rap at the time was actually pretty decent all things considered, but most guitar music was complete shit by that time (god, I haaaaaate The Soft Bulletin so much).

Eureka was a really big deal for me also and felt like a culmination of the "reissue culture" in that it was expansively referential and used references to signify "meaning".

The late 90s for me were all about Beck, Björk, Sonic Youth (a minority opinion I am sure, but this is where they peaked for me), those early Modest Mouse albums. It was also when I got into Aphex Twin and autechre and other Warp artists.

It's also very much associated to the internet and Napster in particular, so it really is when I started digging really deep into things that interested me. Something that was previously impossible due to my limited financial resources.

Missed this poll but it would’ve been a bloody struggle between 1910s, 1970s and 1980s