Oh, yeah - my list was really the tip of the iceberg. Most people think of the '80s as A Flock of Seagulls (who actually had a couple good songs) and “Mickey” and shit, but there was a ton of great music being made, mostly under the top 40 radar. (And I should mention, given your location, the '80s was when I first heard South African music, thanks to The Indestructible Beat of Soweto and, to some extent, Graceland.)
I didn’t mean to completely write off the '70s, either - there were a million awesome soul songs (soul/R&B kind of went to shit in the '80s), punk singles, Kraftwerk, Bowie, Roxy Music, Queen, Hawkwind, and all that. But most of the “classic rock” (or, to use a more appropriate term, “butt rock”) of the era does nothing for me.
Hands down, 2000-2010 for the very simple reason that, over time, music just tends to get better and better over time. Admittedly, 3 of my top 4 favorite albums came out in 1999, but the overall quality of the 00s is just better than the 90s. The only reason I can’t really pick 2010 to present is because there just isn’t enough ought there to really compete fairly with other decades, but I imagine that this will change in a few years.
To clarify, I’m refering to music as a collective, not just popular music, I pretty much stay out of popular music. If it were about the popular styles, well, I would actually go with the 70s because I love the hard rock and prog rock sound of that era which, interestingly enough, seems to be in vogue right now.
And I also say that music just gets better because modern music gets to pull from so much more as an influence than older music does, and that influence will continue to expand. Modern technology, especially since it became realistically possible to do near studio quality recording on a PC in the late 90s and early 00s, means that there’s some things that simply weren’t possible before but are now. It also means that some musicians who may not have gotten a break before can get their music out there. So with so much more music being generated, sure, a lot more of it is crap, but it also means we’ll generate a lot more gems.
The '80s were great, but it was like watching mutations spring forth: some were viable, some were awesome, some were just cancerous things that needed to be destroyed.
The '90s were like watching evolution in action, seeing how and which mutants would survive.
The '00s were awesome, and the surviving mutations thrived and begat their own offspring.
But so far, the current decade is consistently producing the best music I’ve ever heard, by and large.
David Bowie
Big Star
X-Ray Spex
Leonard Cohen
Tom Waits
The Clash
Richard and Linda Thompson
Nina Simone
Tim Buckley
Can
Faust
Pink Floyd
Elvis Costello
Joy Division
Wire
Neil Young
The Stooges
Gram Parsons
Having said that, my favorite 10 year span would be something like 1997-2007, with 1997/1998 my favorite years.
Thread tying the two decades together: In both, you get Deep Purple. The band was named after the 1930s song. Because it was Ritchie Blackmore’s grandmother’s favorite song. What a sweet boy, our Ritchie, to do that for his granny!
The Doors and the Beatles make me favor the '60s, but my generation was grunge so nothing beats the '90s overall for me. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and some '90s metal like White Zombie, Pantera and Living Colour and I’m happy.
Not that the '70s and '80s were bad, mind you. Who doesn’t like Queen, New Order, or the Police, for instance?
But the '90s were my generation and Kurt Cobain was the voice of it, so I have to go with that.
The 70’s had by far the greatest range of music. Dance your butt off to Donna Summer and the Bee Gees. Rock out to Arena Rock groups like Queen and Boston. Country had the bad ass Outlaws Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Jesse Coulter captured my heart with I’m Not Lisa. Get funky with Patti LaBelle and I watched Soul Train and midnight special every weekend.
Born in '86 here, and I voted for 1980-1990, but it’s a hard choice. I absolutely love stuff from the 50’s and 60’s as well, and I agree with sentiments that music really does just keep getting better and better. So I really like all of it, but I picked the 80’s because that’s were most of my personal favorite songs and artists were at their best.