Personally I think the 80's were best, ever since music has gone downhill.
Mods pull if you wish
If I have to stick with "decades", I would take the 1960s over the 1970s. The top act of the 1960s, The Beatles, is far better than the best act of the 1970s, Elton John, early in the decade, and The BeeGees, later. The secondary acts of both decades are good, so they cancel each other out.
64-74, that’s a decade right?
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I think the 60's set the table for an expansion of styles and sounds; the 70's delivered on that exploration; and the 80's sort of left it all behind and a lot of unique sounds disappeared..
IMHO:
70’s
60’s
80’s
YMMV
I would vote for the 60s and 70s both. My iPhone is fully loaded with both.
No question.
The 60’s have MOTOWN!!!! Almost no need for anything else!!
Nothing can come close to the 60’s. It just any better than the Motown sound. The Temps, Smoky, Wilson Picket, Otis Redding, Brook Benton, The Supremes, James Brown and so many more. Too many to mention.
The Sixties were the breakthrough decade. Rock took over and artists were doing things with it that were unthinkable before. But a lot of Sixties artists didn’t really hit their stride until the Seventies.
By the end of the Seventies, music was pretty awful — or just boring: disco, metal, “arena rock.” The Eighties brought new life back to popular music. A new generation. A New British invasion. In music and everything else they were more enjoyable and entertaining than the Seventies.
That New Wave passed with the end of the Eighties. Rock and pop would struggle on, even into the new century, but rock is dead by now. It’s become niche music, like jazz. Pop has been taken over by rap.
I like them all. I also like the swing band era pre WW2. But since the early 90s the big studios have taken more and more control. Add autotune and you now have the most insipid pop music ever. Rap doesn’t belong in any discussion of music. Rap is the home of the talentless criminal subculture.
60’s by a MILE.
70’s next.
80’s gave us TOO MUCH garbage like Bon Jovi.
I listen big band era on Sirius in my car.
...that and the prevalence of illicit drugs, going from mind altering drugs in the 1960s to mind numbing drugs by the 1980s (both illicit drugs and prescribed drugs by the 1990s).
‘1966-1986 was the greatest 20yr span, so the answer is the 1970’s.
Sorted in some order by impact, not necessarily by invention:
-AM Radio
-Vinyl Albums
-Electric guitars
-AM Radio in automobiles
-Multi-track recording
-Solid State Transformers
-Portable Radios
-8 Tracks
-FM Radio - Clearer music, stereo sound. Singer/Songwriters, lyrics to the forefront.
-Cassettes
-Music Videos
-Boom Boxes
-Personal headphones like the Sony Walkman
-Compact Discs
-MP3 players like the iPhone
-Digital Downloads
-Online videos
-Mobile phone listening such as with Spotify
Eras don’t begin neatly with decades.
I would say the late 60s-early 70s saw a sea change in the rock (Beatles, Stones, Who, CSNY, Led Zepplin). The music was dazzling, even though the politics and social climate were awful.
All amazing. All good. Depends on the day and the mood for me. Sixties really didn’t start until the Beatles in 1964.
Hard Rock: 70s
Punk & Rap: 80s
Electronic: 90s
Everything after is pretty much overengineered trite garbage, but I'm old so what do I know about modern music. Get off my lawn!