What was the best era for mainstream music?

[mr.hadoken]

[media=youtube]lg263dzOn3Q]YouTube - Rick James- Mary Jane [With Lyrics[/media] even Spiderman loves Mary Jane
[media=youtube]A5AAcgtMjUI]YouTube - Aaliyah - Rock The Boat [url[/media] Method man going crazy at the end

Music was the shit in videos back in these days. Music would still would go on even after the song

[Vynce]

Make this thread again in 10 years. I’ll say it was now. Older things are always better.

Always. It’s not nostalgia. In reality, things are always getting progressively worse.

[mr.hadoken]

i agree

[True_Grave]

80’s all the way.

[Sexperienced]

if by “best” you mean critically acclaimed then it has to be late 60’s-mid 70’s bcuz that era encompasses the british invasion and the height of motown. that was probably the only era where the critics and populace were completely on the same page with regards to what was “good” music. 80’s music was terrible with a few exceptions and since the 90’s if something is popular critics almost definitely pan and vice versa.

Motown music was probably more popular in Britain than in America… Still cant believe that England pretty much discovered Jimi Hendrix before America did.

[epsilon]

Interesting thread (kind of).

It boils down to what kind of music you like the best, and what you grew up listening to.

I like Jazzy/Funky/Electronic music the best, so for me it’s the 70’s, because at the time even a lot of “rock” groups were very influenced by jazz, funk & soul (steely dan, doobie brothers, average white band, even the rolling stones have a few funky tunes) and it was a viable sound commercially, and there was still a lot of musicianship and musicality in a lot of the songs.

As far as music in general basically all decades (60’s+, post funk/soul) have had some great “underground” music that is relevant to my tastes…its hard to pick out a specific era. I love 60’s modal/spiritual jazz, 70’s jazz-funk/rock/fusion/electronic experiments, 80’s boogie & post punk & early house music, 90’s hip hop, deep house & acid jazz, 2000’s nu jazz & broken beat…and it just keeps going. Music is a progressive medium.

[goodm0urning]

Late 60s/early 70s.

The Beatles proved that the same group of people can write the songs, record the songs, and play and sing the songs on tour–the true DIY, self-contained music-producing group. This idea, in my mind, utterly changed the definition of mainstream music. They started the institution of the band as we know it today.

Jimi Hendrix changed what it was to be a great musician. It went from being a proficient technician who could hit all the right notes to being someone who had an innate understanding of the power of pure sound. He proved that the qualities of your playing can even trump the song itself.

As far as the industry went, it’s one of the only times in the history of western music when the financiers gave the inmates the keys to the asylum. 1960s music executives just seemed to flat-out not give a fuck what their groups were recording as long as it sold. We have not seen that before or since, and the only thing even close to that sort of musical freedom and diversity we have today is our technological ability to bypass the industry entirely.