Ask A Music Critic: What Is The Best Decade For Music?

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

I have a friend who is completely obsessed with ’80s music. But his obsessions with ’80s music goes beyond just being his favorite decade of music over the 45-plus years of his life. It’s almost as if all music ceased to exist after 1989 and he will forever be content listening only to albums that were made during this period. This leads me to my question: If you were told that you could only listen to music from one decade for the rest of your life, what decade would it be? —Dan from Westchester, NY

Hey Dan, with all due respect to your friend: This sounds like an insane way to live! Many people reach a point in their listening lives where they stop following new music and stick with their comfortable favorites. This is sad and unfortunate, from a music critic’s perspective, but also common and relatively normal. But listening to music from only one decade — when it has never been easier to hear anything from any period you wish — seems severely self-limiting. I like the 1980s as much as the next Gordon Gekko wannabe, but at some point don’t the ears grow tired of gated drums, fake-sounding horns, and all the other sonic signatures of the period? How does one not yearn for a little adventure, and occasionally venture to, say, 1979 or 1990? Is it fair to assume that your friend loves Bleach but has not delved into Nevermind or In Utero? When it comes to television, does he swear off The Sopranos and Mad Men in favor of the first several seasons of The Cosby Show? Does he plan to cast a vote for Michael Dukakis in November? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Setting all of that aside: Your question is an interesting one, hypothetically speaking. For most people, the preferred musical decade question is easy — you go with the time period that coincides with your teens and early 20s. This is the music to which people tend to be instinctively loyal as they age. Isn’t it amazing and sort of miraculous that the epoch of musical achievement in the modern age always seems to coincide with the exact years when we are between the ages of 14 and 22? Just an incredible coincidence!

On some level, we all know this isn’t literally true. But the emotional veracity of this belief is widespread and unquestioned. And it’s not just “normal” listeners who feel this way. Each new generation of music critics comes along and is determined to displace the previous generation’s favorites with their own as the new “best” and “definitive” music.

Not this music critic, however. I am the rare rock writer with the unique ability to set aside my own personal biases and assess music with unassailable objectivity. For instance, being that I’m a 47-year-old man, one might assume that my choice for “best” musical decade is the ’90s. I was 12 when the decade started, and I was 23 when it ended. It was, obviously, the most formative decade of my life. But it is not the “best” decade, in my opinion. Now, I love ’90s music. And I love thinking and writing about ’90s music. (I wrote two books on two of the biggest rock bands of the decade.) And this era has inevitable nostalgic appeal for me, even the albums that evoke some of the worst years of my life. (I was in junior high from 1990 to ’92, a stretch of time I have often referred to as “Vietnam,” and there are some incredible records from that time.) But my personal affection for the ’90s doesn’t blind me to the weaknesses of the time. The late ’90s, for instance, were pretty awful, and no amount of revisionism from TRL-reared millennials will ever convince me otherwise. As we age, our brains edit out the bad stuff and leave only the good, at least when it comes to music. But as a professional music pundit, I have forced myself to remember The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshmen” and Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch” and countless other crimes against art.

So, what is my objective choice for best musical decade? The 1970s.

To me, it boils down to variety. If you had to stick with one decade, you want to draw from a time with the widest variety of great music. And I don’t think any decade can touch the ’70s. Just look at rock music at that time. You had arena-level superstars operating at their peak: David Bowie, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, the Rolling Stones, and the list goes on and on. And then you have scores of subgenres that were either coming into their own or being invented on the spot. That includes glam (T. Rex, Mott The Hoople, Sweet), prog (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis), metal (Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden), southern rock (the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd), jazz rock (Steely Dan, Traffic), punk (The Ramones, The Clash), new wave (Talking Heads, Blondie), and goth (Joy Division, The Cure).

And that’s just scratching the surface. Think of all the incredible R&B and funk of the ’70s. The following artists were in their primes: Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, George Clinton, the Isley Brothers, Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, and Michael Jackson. The ’70s were a great decade for country music — give me all those wonderful records by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, and Townes Van Zandt. And the ’70s were awesome for jazz, particularly if you like fusion and Miles Davis’ most coked-out work. And let’s not forget about the pioneering electronic records from Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, and Tangerine Dream. Or krautrock. Or disco.

If I had to stick with one decade, I think I could listen exclusively to records that came out in the 1970s and run the lowest risk of ever feeling bored. The choices seem limitless, even though there is a clearly delineated limit. However, I am glad that I don’t have to do this. The world is big. It’s nice to experience as much of the bigness that you can.

This week Pitchfork published their list of the best albums of the 2020s so far, and it made me think about the column you wrote earlier this year where you speculated on what critics would pick for their mid-decade lists. I feel like your predictions were fairly (though not completely) accurate. What are your thoughts on this? — Clare from Springfield, Missouri

Hey Clare, thanks for remembering that column! For those that don’t remember, here are the 10 albums I expected to be in contention, given their praise at the time of release, listed in alphabetical order:

Alvvays, Blue Rev (2022)
Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters (2020)
Beyoncé, Renaissance (2022)
Boygenius, The Record (2023)
Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher (2020)
Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee (2021)
Olivia Rodrigo, Sour (2021)
Rosalìa, Motomami (2022)
Taylor Swift, Folklore (2020)
Tyler The Creator, Call Me If You Get Lost (2021)
SZA, SOS (2022)

Now, I didn’t include any albums from 2024, as this column dropped in January. (Or pre-Brat summer.) But I still think I did well. Four of these records ended up in Pitchfork’s top 10: Fiona Apple (their No. 1 pick), Beyoncé, Rosalìa, and SZA. That means I’m batting .400. I’m practically Ted Williams! As for the other predictions: Alvvays landed at No. 15, Phoebe Bridgers came in at No. 44, Taylor Swift was at No. 67, and Tyler The Creator squeaked in at No. 92. As for Boygenius, Japanese Breakfast, and Olivia Rodrigo — sorry, there was no mid-year list love for you here.

What are my thoughts? My first thought is that this is one website, and I suspect that some of these artists will do better on other lists. Particularly Bridgers and the Boygenius crew. (Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker didn’t make Pitchfork‘s list at all, which was mildly shocking.) I wasn’t a fan of the last BG record, but I recall feeling pretty lonely about that in the critical community. The Record was easily the most universally adored indie-adjacent record of the decade thus far. Pitchfork was among the outlets treating it like an event, lavishing Boygenius with a “Best New Music” rave and a follow-up concert review and podcast interview.

And now … nothing. Really? Even putting Punisher — certainly one of the most influential and emblematic records of the 2020s, whether you love it or not — far outside the top 20 feels pointed, like the BG-mania of last year (yes, it really was just last year) already seems like a distant (and slightly cringe-y?) memory.

That’s the thing with these lists: They mark a moment in time. This is how critics feel, right now. But time always marches forward. New lists loom on the horizon. And what they mark will almost certainly be very different from the current normal.