Ship of Fools: Best/worst decade for music

Thread: Best/worst decade for music Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :

This thread is prompted by the best rock thread and some alarming plans my wife has for making me go in dungarees in the style of Dexys Midnight Runners to an 80s night. I can make a case for the musical excellence of the 60s, 70s, and 90s but not of the 80s or noughties. In the case of the noughties, I can claim ignorance since my kids were small and the decade passed me by but I was only too aware of the mediocrity of music in the 1980s because I was school kid and student for most of it.

Can anyone stage a defence?

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :

The trouble is, it's purely subjective. 80's music is the best btw, but then the 80's is the decade I look back on with the most fondness.

Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :

The decade that inexplicably ended with Kylie, Jason and Rick - and having perpetrated Madonna and Chaka Khan en route - started much more promisingly with the heydays of groups like OMD and Ultravox. Not to everyone's taste, but it was when the synthesiser (which had already been around a good number of years) emerged as an instrument in its own right. The groups of the early 80s showed what could be done with it and it became far more integrated into the musician's arsenal than before. For that, alone, I think the 80s are worth the price of entry.

See Hunting Venus for further details.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I think every era has its set of appalling music, and most have something to redeem them.

The end of the 1070s brought us punk. Some of that was good, gritty music. Some of it was utter drivel.

The 1980s brought us disco. Some disco is good, quite a bit should never have seen the light of day.

We tend to remember the good stuff, because it is good and lasts. We forget that the era, the style, the bands that produced those timeless classics also produced utter tat. So a best era might be as dependent on what music we remember from it as anything else.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
The 1980s brought us disco.

I think the 80s were the tail end of disco, actually. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was released in 1977, and the Village People single YMCA was relaeased in '78. To take just two representative examples.

And, while it might not mark the presice end of the era, the Disco Demolition Night was held in July of 1979. As i recall, it was around that time that my local saturday-afternoon dancing TV show removed the word "disco" from its name.

Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
The trouble is, it's purely subjective. 80's music is the best btw, but then the 80's is the decade I look back on with the most fondness.

It's not often I agree with every word in a post by Ad Orientem but this is spot on. [Biased]

Despite that, I tend to listen less to Absolute 80's than to 60's and 70's these days - but that is only because the latter two don't have so many adverts.

Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :

It depends on the genre.

For metal, the 80s were the best. The Maiden, the Big Four of thrash plus countless other bands were, it can be argued, at their peak.

For alternative music, the 90s were the best. Bands like Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Kyuss and various crossover bands like Rage Against the Machine and all metal/rap collaborations (Helmet and House of Pain stand out).

For rock, the 70s were the best. Deep Purple, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin were at their peaks, as were Pink Floyd. I also identify pop, funk and soul with that decade as well (the Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye and Gwen McCrae).

For worst decades, well pop got atrotious in the 80s and (apart from a brief beginning for house) never recovered. Metal had a bad 90s; Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were underpar. It all got better in 2000 though.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Rosa wrote:

quote:
For worst decades, well pop got atrotious in the 80s

I dunno. Allowing that the definiton of pop is somewhat fluid, I kinda liked Joan Jett, Toto, Kim Carnes, and Bronski Beat(granted, that's mostly based on their radio play).

But those groups are early 80s. Contrary to the popular view, I think things sorta went downhill when acts like Michael Jackson and Madonna rose to hegemony in the period roughly corresponding with Ronald Reagan's second term in office.

Especially Jackson, whose music just seemed vacuous to me. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there was no "there" there.

Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :

I'm showing my age (and my decline into senility) - but the 70's were the best. I've even begun to re-evaluate the crappy pop music of the early 70's. I like listening to the Jackie albums in the car, as I can sing along - even to David Cassidy and Donny Osmond! [Eek!]

The 80's started OK, but then Thatcherism (in the UK) took over and society as a whole became empty and greedy and the music tended to reflect that. I see the 80's as a pretty vacuous time. But I also know that this is a rather broad-brush over-simplification. For me the 90's are even emptier - did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

The worst decade EVER for music is the 1990s!!

Boyzone-style boy bands
Ibiza/Ministry of Sound type 'dance' music
Oasis

Need I say more?

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
For me the 90's are even emptier - did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

Well, I guess it depends how you regard groups like Nirvana, and the whole Seattle/grunge scene generally.

Again, based mostly on radio play, but I related to a lot of that stuff. YMMV.

Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :

I found it interesting listening to Real Radio in work, just how many "old" - ie classic - tracks were played, and wonder how many "modern" tracks will still be played in 20 years time.

Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
For me the 90's are even emptier - did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

Well, I guess it depends how you regard groups like Nirvana, and the whole Seattle/grunge scene generally.

I try to think of them as little as possible. All pretty dire stuff.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

I'm going to pick the decade from 1965 to about 1975 as the best decade. Music was going to change the world. We all thought there was a social conscience it could awaken. We could love everyone out of everything, man. In that time period, we had everything, sometimes all on the same album. I also liked this time period because I had long blond hair and could let my freak flag fly.

I will pick 1975 to 1985 as the worst. Because of disco. The only salvation in that decade was New Wave. My wife and I bought our first Love Shack in that decade.

On the other hand, I had an album in the 1970s called the Greatest Hits of !720, after which I explored the cantatas of Bach. So my second favouritist decade is the 1720s. My third might be one of Beethoven's decades.

Posted by Rosa Winkel (# 11424) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
For me the 90's are even emptier - did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

Well, I guess it depends how you regard groups like Nirvana, and the whole Seattle/grunge scene generally.
I try to think of them as little as possible. All pretty dire stuff.

This summer I saw Alice in Chains and Soundgarden live. Anyone who listens to the "Jar of flies" EP by the former and isn't moved must be dead.

Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I will pick 1975 to 1985 as the worst. Because of disco. The only salvation in that decade was New Wave. My wife and I bought our first Love Shack in that decade.

That's like saying the redeeming feature of The Hobbit is Bilbo Baggins. The whole point is Punk and New Wave (though
I'd argue it's a shorter period). Disco is a mere footnote.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

You're bound to have sentimental memories of the sort of music that was around during your late teens. Once you become a full blown adult and have children, you tend not to notice pop music any more. So I can't comment on more recent decades.

However, I'd say the music of the late 40s and early 50s was the nadir of popular music. Everything about the music of the immediate post war period was dire.

[ 10. December 2014, 22:03: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by Prester John (# 5502) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

However, I'd say the music of the late 40s and early 50s was the nadir of popular music. Everything about the music of the immediate post war period was dire.

I'm no expert but I thought a lot of really good jazz came out around that time.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

Most people have fond memories of music from their teenage years. There are papers on thefondness for music learned as a teenager

As for the 1940's and 1950s, that was the golden age of pop music taken from Broadway; South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady all spun off pop hits. Then there was the Black Blues, the start of Rock n Roll, and the Jazz mentioned earlier.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Personally, I'm fond of the second decade of the eighteenth century. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, D. Scarlatti- what's not to love?

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

The '60s is the best, of course. But I'm always perplexed by the way the '80s get dissed. I suspect it's because what sticks in people's memory is MTV and the bad haircuts on those videos. But to me, the '80s is Dire Straits, Elvis Costello, the Pretenders, U2 at their best, Springsteen, Michael Jackson before he was crazy, REM, the Eurhythmics, Cyndi Lauper, Talking Heads, Television, Graham Parker, Joe Jackson, and in general a revival of creativity that began in the late '70s but didn't really take hold until a few years later.

The '70s were dreadful until the very end, and the '90s only slightly better. I haven't really paid much attention since then.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

quote:
However, I'd say the music of the late 40s and early 50s was dire.

I wasn't there...but here's a vote for these guys. I picked an easy one - a slow ballad - just for yous.

I was a teenager in the 80s, and like a lot of my friends found refuge in earlier times (for me like most boys I knew, no-prophet's 1965-1975 decade provided a reliable goldmine). There were 80s gems to be found, but perhaps the mainstream radio put me off looking for them at the time, except for bands like U2, The Alarm and New Model Army who I loved. Later on I got to appreciate some of the early synth music (esp. Gary Numan) which I earlier loathed, perhaps because it had been associated in my un-co mind (from 'uncoordinated', our cruel slang for geeky) with dancing and ritual disco humiliation. [Big Grin]

[ETA - add more of the list from the previous post to 80s bands I loved (but seem to have forgotten!)]

[ 11. December 2014, 04:52: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]

Posted by bib (# 13074) on :

I have two favourites.
Firstly the classical era of Bach and others from that period. What exquisite music. I doubt if there will ever be anything as brilliant again.
Secondly I loved and still love the music from the 1960s and particularly the Beatles, and the myriad of folk singers such as Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel. Music from that era is still being played and enjoyed, but much of the music from later decades seems to have a shorter life.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

I'm not hung up on a decade, I'll happily sing along with anything with a catchy tune whatever the decade. My mother was the same. I also think nostalgia is the key factor in preference.
I have 7 older siblings so was introduced to the charts at a young age. The first song I really fell in love with was Fleetwood Mac's Dreams from 1977 when I was 7. My own era was the 80s, with Elvis Costello, OMD, Howard Jones and, later, 10,000 Maniacs. The 90s was the decade I partied as an independent 20 something, going to gigs and festivals to see Catatonia and Pulp. Now I'm 45 and my children listen to chart music and I still like some of it - I fell in love with the rap duo Rizzle Kicks as they are fabulous poets. I hate all the auto tuning around now though and that's what spoils some more recent music for me, I do like a good voice.

Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

REM broke out into mainstream awareness. I wouldn't have known about them if not for "Losing my religion".

And Pulp. The sheer, raw, contemptuous disgust and in every syllable of "Common People" still makes me shiver.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

The 1750s were a little weak. Bach was dead and Haydn was only just starting.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

It may not be cool, but I love me some eighties. Some friends and I are currently putting together a rock band (purely for our own entertainment because we think it would be fun), and our whole repertoire seems to be basically cheesy eighties hair bands. Cool? Nah, not really. Everybody loves these songs tho. Our plan is to find some divy bar somewhere to play in, and we reckon these songs are almost guaranteed to be a hit.

So far, in no particular order, we have (i.e. these are songs we want on our set list, we haven’t practised them all yet):

Survivor – Eye of the Tiger
Joan Jett – I love Rock and Roll
Def Leppard – Let’s Get Rocked
Michael Jackson – Beat It
Europe – Final Countdown
Van Halen – Jump
Lenny Kravitz – American Woman (so far the only non-80s thing on the list)
Meat Loaf/Cher – Dead Ringer for Love
Robert Palmer – Addicted to Love
Huey Lewis & the News – the Power of Love

We also need some Bryan Adams and Queen. And maybe some Police.

I make no pretensions to coolness with the above list. They are all *awesome*, though.

Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
... I will pick 1975 to 1985 as the worst. Because of disco ...

Oddly enough, I'd probably nominate 1975-1985 as the best. Despite disco. [Big Grin]

I sort of "discovered" popular music in the late 1970s, just in time for wonderful bands like Queen, Genesis, Pink Floyd, ELO and the better of the punk bands, like the Clash.

I was a student in the early 1980s and was just the right age to appreciate the New Romantics - Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, ABC, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ...

IMHO things began to go pear-shaped after Culture Club (or perhaps it was me going pear-shaped, and getting old).

** trots off to dig up flying suit and pixie boots **

These days, I'd probably say the best decade for music was the 1590s. [Killing me]

PS Having just read La Vie's list, I think we may be soul-mates (or rather, rock-mates). [Cool]

[ 11. December 2014, 15:04: Message edited by: Piglet ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
I was a student in the early 1980s and was just the right age to appreciate the New Romantics - Ultravox, Spandau Ballet, ABC, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ...

Tangential, but I am reminded that 1970s disco icons The Village People had a brief New Romantic phase in the early 80s.

Obviously, they were unable to go whole-hog and ditch the bare-chest thing.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

Culture Club is a Bad Thought, as I starts hearing the Karma Chameleon strains combined with Boney M doing "Mary's Boy Child" just now, and trying to steer brain from "Ra Ra Rasputin" as Jose Felciano "Felice Navidad" also intrudes. I don't know whether to shoot myself or go dancing.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

I think we have a consensus with only a few exception. The best decade of music is and always will be the decade of our adolescence and the worst the decade with the music least like it.

There has to be something special about the music of the times we discovered sex.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
... As for the 1940's and 1950s, that was the golden age of pop music taken from Broadway; South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady all spun off pop hits. Then there was the Black Blues, the start of Rock n Roll, and the Jazz mentioned earlier.

I'll give you that South Pacific is probably the best of that genre if you like that sort of thing. Most of the others have gone down the plughole of history, a pretty mediocre bunch. My Fair Lady doesn't really count as it isn't until 1955, the same year as Bill Haley, the Comets and Rock Around the Clock.

A fairly typical example of the era before the UK charts which didn't start until 1952, is Buttons and Bows. What was that? You may well ask, but it was very popular in 1947.

If I tell you that the first number one in 1952, which was top for nine weeks, was Here in my heart by Al Martino, I think that rather proves my point. Other chart toppers that endorse it include the Frankie Lane version of I Believe (that's the twangy guitar version) 18 weeks in 1953, and How much is that doggy in the window?, one week, also in 1953.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

Most people are going to answer this question with reference to whatever music they liked when they were in their teens or twenties.

There's been great stuff in every decade, and most often you needed to dig at least a little for it. The 80s are awful on the surface (big drums, tinny synths and attenuated bass), but scratch it a bit and you find post-punk experimentation going strong, a brief flourishing of synthpop before it was co-opted by the Top 40, the burgeoning "alternative" scene (it referred to artists like Husker Du, Robyn Hitchcock and Game Theory before it was used to refer to whiny junkies from Washington State)--all fascinating and still waiting to be explored.

I could say similar things about the proportions of suckage and brilliance in every decade for the past 50 or 60 years. Good music is always being made, but you'll only hear it rarely on commercial radio stations.

Posted by Bene Gesserit (# 14718) on :

For me, the best decade has to be the 1730s - Pergolesi's Stabat Mater is sublime and you had Rameau and Bach and...

Best modern decade? Purely subjectively, the music of my teens was the 1970s which produced some gems - early Queen e.g Seven Seas of Rhye, Killer Queen, Bowie, Floyd, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells - as well as some absolute dross!

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The 1750s were a little weak. Bach was dead and Haydn was only just starting.

Agreed. A bit of a lull that.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Best decade.

Bah! Try best year - 1685 to be precise: birth year of J S Bach, Handel, John Gay and Domenico Scarlatti.

That covers the inventors or finest exponents of: cantata, oratorio, the art of fugue, Lutheran chorales, 'folk' opera, keyboard sonatas, concerto grosso, solo concerto.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

Well, in 1809-11 you get Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt all being born. And Wagner and Verdi a couple of years later.

Not a single year, admittedly, but that's a hell of a crop for one peer group.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Best decade.

Bah! Try best year - 1685 to be precise: birth year of J S Bach, Handel, John Gay and Domenico Scarlatti.

That covers the inventors or finest exponents of: cantata, oratorio, the art of fugue, Lutheran chorales, 'folk' opera, keyboard sonatas, concerto grosso, solo concerto.

So they were all composing all their best works when they were between 0 and 10? [Mad]

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
... As for the 1940's and 1950s, that was the golden age of pop music taken from Broadway; South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady all spun off pop hits. Then there was the Black Blues, the start of Rock n Roll, and the Jazz mentioned earlier.
I'll give you that South Pacific is probably the best of that genre if you like that sort of thing. Most of the others have gone down the plughole of history, a pretty mediocre bunch. My Fair Lady doesn't really count as it isn't until 1955, the same year as Bill Haley, the Comets and Rock Around the Clock.

A fairly typical example of the era before the UK charts which didn't start until 1952, is Buttons and Bows. What was that? You may well ask, but it was very popular in 1947.

If I tell you that the first number one in 1952, which was top for nine weeks, was Here in my heart by Al Martino, I think that rather proves my point. Other chart toppers that endorse it include the Frankie Lane version of I Believe (that's the twangy guitar version) 18 weeks in 1953, and How much is that doggy in the window?, one week, also in 1953.

I saw a good revival of South Pacific on tour a few years back. What impressed me was the intelligence of the lyrics. There's a precision and vocabulary that has not been topped, so I'd agree with you about it being first rate. I am inordinately fond of Guys and Dolls; "Luck by a Lady Tonight" became popular There's a reason the song "There's no business like Show Business" has something like 50 written encores.

1941 "Taking the A train"; My favorite of a number of Ellington and Strayhorn collaborations.
The first Ella Fitzgerald songbooks in the 50's essentially recapping 40's music.

Looking at the Billboard singles for the 40's and 50's there are a lot of clunkers, just as there are in most decades. But still

Glenn Miller "A String of Pearls" 1942
Woody Herman "Blues in the night"
and while I'm not fond of White Christmas some people are.
That Old Black Magic
"Rum and Coca-Cola"

I think you can find dismal stuff in any period, and perhaps the top 40 isn't always the best. But it's a bit crude to have to dismiss a decade.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

You can absolutely find both good and bad stuff in any time period.

The tricky thing for more recent decades is that we haven't yet figured out what's going to last. It's actually when you no longer have a large number of people hanging around who are sentimentally attached to the music of their youth that you're in a decent position to assess what was the really good stuff.

If you're going to work out what was really impressive about the 1960s, don't ask the people who were there, ask the people who weren't - the musicians and the musically minded from later times who heard their parent's records or the old radio station and went "wow, that's really something".

Even then, tastes change. J S Bach was pretty much a non-entity for a couple of generations after his death (1750) for anyone other than fellow composers, before the Bach revival kicked off (usually dated to a landmark concert in 1829).

On a not entirely unrelated note... first of all, in terms of what happened in the 1990s, I'm going to say quite a lot of my favourite music (but then, that's influenced by my age), including the emergence of Tori Amos. Second, I was kind of surprised and thrilled, at one of the meet and greets before one of Tori's concerts, to meet a fan who was only 18 years old - making him younger than Tori's first two, most popular albums. And I met people in their 20s as well. Not everyone is simply tied to the music of their teenage years. I myself own and love a scattering of pop/rock albums made before I was born or when I was a mere babe, and am still exploring that era.

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

I'll go for Handel, Domenico Scarlatti et al, with a nod to Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Kingston Trio.
But there's an awful lot more good music out there of all kinds. It made my day when a young baritone busker in the street sang 'Waly Waly'
Schubert, anyone?

GG

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I saw a good revival of South Pacific on tour a few years back. What impressed me was the intelligence of the lyrics. There's a precision and vocabulary that has not been topped, so I'd agree with you about it being first rate. ...

... But it's a bit crude to have to dismiss a decade.

I didn't say South Pacific was first rate. I said it "is probably the best of that genre if you like that sort of thing".

Any period of time is bound to produce individual items that some people will like. But in some periods, the popular music Zeitgeist has a buzz that makes it more likely people will compose better music, and in other periods, it's more likely they will produce turkeys.

The discussion is about which decade is the best/worst. One of them therefore has to come bottom. The ten years from the end of the war in 1945 is the one I'm nominating for that slot.

Your perception also may depend on what country you're in. The sixties for me aren't Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel. They're the Beatles and the Stones.

[ 12. December 2014, 08:27: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Best musical - for singable tunes - is one that's never performed: The Arcadians.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Best musical - for singable tunes - is one that's never performed: The Arcadians.

I don't know it, but my late father, who did not go back quite that far, reckoned the pop music of the years before the Great War was a lot better than the music of his own youth (1920s-30s).

Posted by moron (# 206) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
did ANYTHING good happen musically in the 90's??

I'm trying to avoid overstatement.

It's in the Top Five Of All Time album list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragged_Glory (of particular note is track 3)

quote:
The album features many extended guitar jams, with two songs stretching out to ten minutes and more.

I would travel great distances and pay much money to see them play this album in its entirety (remember when Van Morrison did Astral Weeks like that?).

So there.

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