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Music's golden and not so golden eras
To me the golden eras would be 1955-59, when what we now call rock music was invented, 1967-74, when guitar music moved from pop to psychedelia, prog rock, heavy rock and glam rock and when soul music developed an exciting edge. Also the period 1978-82, when there was a massive growth in youth cults and exciting new trends like NWOBHM, 2 Tone, post punk and synthesiser music, and 2002-05, when metal and rock came back from the dead in a new format.
Dud eras to me would be 1960-62, when music seemed to fall asleep, 1988-92, bland pop followed by awful rave music, and 1998-2001, when guitar music seemed to die and drivel like garage and boy bands ruled the charts( dance was good, though).
Dud eras to me would be 1960-62, when music seemed to fall asleep, 1988-92, bland pop followed by awful rave music, and 1998-2001, when guitar music seemed to die and drivel like garage and boy bands ruled the charts( dance was good, though).
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The worst years for mainstream music in my memory at least were 2009 and 2011 really. Nothing to say about them. Just generic dance-pop
It's improving though. 2012 was an improvement on 2011 for sure, and 2013 is even better so far.
Duff eras: 1988-90, 2010 to present day.
The mid 50s was the golden age of rock n roll never to be repeated. The Beatles heralded a golden era in 60s British pop, the late 60s psychedelia era was great, the punk explosion and new wave 1976 to 79/80 was a golden era again for rock and pop.
I think the difficulty with this is that if you consider genres of music like Soul or Metal or Reggae, historically they will have golden eras at different times, I think there are only a few times when you might consider a major golden era for music generally.
The real golden eras then were probably the mid 60s and the late 70s....
On balance I'd say 1993 was completely awful. There was the tail end of the rave scene, a load of cod reggae around and the **** end of grunge. There was nothing happening.
1973 has to be a vintage year, as the greatest album ever made, Dark Side of the Moon, was released.
Personally, I'd say 1993 was pretty great, though I'm just a big fan of 90s music in general. As stated above, 1993 is one of the great years for hip hop, and I'd say it was a very good year for metal too. I disagree that it was the '**** end of grunge' - Nirvana released their best album (imo), Pearl Jam released another great album, Smashing Pumpkins brought out the classic 'Siamese Dream', while Dinosaur Jr. and The Breeders put out strong releases too. Soundgarden and Alice in Chains didn't release in that year but were both about to release some of their best, and most successful music in the following couple of years.
Then even just looking at rock music alone, you've got the likes of Suede and Blur kicking off Britpop, PJ Harvey's brilliant 'Rid of Me', then Slowdive, Mazzy Star and Afghan Whigs all releasing albums that are now regarded as classics by alternative music fans. As far as I can see, plenty was happening in 1993.
Agree.
theres so much i disagree with here....
rock music 'invented' 55-59?... you mean rock n roll, rock as we know it didnt form until the beatles popularised the 'group' format. the great early rock musicians cut their way in the rhythm and blues boom of the mid 60's, 63-66. rock isnt rock and roll, its a whole step up, an evolution, and one thats still around practically unchanged from the early guitar groups of the early/mid 60's.
1967-74, when guitar music moved from pop to psychedelia, prog rock, heavy rock and glam rock and when soul music developed an exciting edge
eh?... guitar music moved from pop?... rubbish! 63-7 had far more cutting edge guitar music then 67-74. there was precious little pop and what there was was the beatles, stones, kinks, who, yardbirds, animals, small faces etc..great pop music, what you had after 67 was the tremeloes, cuff links, dave dee, hermans hermits, manfred mann, (the last two sold out at the behest of their record labels c 67), pickettywitch, paper lace etc etc etc. the charts from 67-74 were littered with pop, and not the quality you had 64-67. true there was an evolution into heavy rock/prog rock... but glam rock was just pop, and a jokey form at that.
as for soul/black music... developed an exciting edge?... what? the stylistics? the tams? chi-lites? all that sweet soul crap or that uncious philly sound, the sleaziest musc ever?.. you think that was better then 60's motown? or stax soul? arthur conley, otis reading, marvin gaye, aretha franklin, more 'edgy'?... nonsense.
agreed about 78-82. and you have a point 60-62
disagree about rave being awful... you might not have liked it...hell i didnt! but i can see why it was popular and important.
i guess 98-01 would be poor if you only like guitar music... there was alot of boyband crap about, still is.. but uk garage was great, so was the dance (trance) that hit the lower reaches of the charts.
oh its you again!
yeah 93 was poor, but it was 'ragga' not 'reggae'... :cool:
cant stand dsotm... pretencious twaddle... but 73 did see the greatest album released (after revolver)... tubular bells!
fav eras in order
64-70
99-05 :eek: (bet thats a surprise!)
77-83
dud eras
88-93
72-76
06-13
However, I would always disagree with the punk view that the mid seventies were terrible. Yes were awful, I'd totally agree with that, and Camel were just too weird, but this was balanced out by fine music from 10cc, David Bowie, Queen and Pilot and the disco boom was taking off.
Just compare for example the UK charts for this week in that year with say 1979, or even just 5 years earlier in the 80's. Pop music fell off a cliff very rapidly at this point in time.
Considering your above post #11 Glenn A, I hope you are watching the weekly (in real time) re-runs of Top Of The Pops from the same week in 1978, and even being shown at the same time and night, Thursday at 7.30pm, on BBC4 because they should be right up your street, and the variety of music, from fantastic to utterly grim is quite remarkable. Not sure if you have posted about that subject before on the dedicated thread.
British music seemed to go down the drain in the late 80s with the infamous PWL hit factory and trash like Jive Bunny. I won't add it to my dud eras as the standard of rock coming out of America was excellent with Guns and Roses, Metallica and Anthrax breaking through and also Public Enemy were awesome.
Another good era, if you like dance would be some of the dance records that came out around 2000 and 2001. At the time rock seemed to be dead, garage was popular and boy bands were dominating the chart, but this was balanced out by rather good dance tracks from Darude, ATB, DJ Fragma and Fatboy Slim. Dance seemed to have really evolved from ear splitting rave and cheesy house into something more substantial. However, post 2001, and rock re emerged and for four years the charts were really exciting.
Best 85-91
Best 85-91[/QUOTE]
i agree, that the early part of the nineties did not have much identity but Firestarter by the Prodigy stood out in 96.
1999 (trance!)
1996 (Britpop/dance!)
1991 (Rave!)
1987 (Pet Shop Boys/New Order high-energy!)
and 1981 (Synthpop!)
Least faves:
1992 (Pop kiddie rave)
1985 (not-quite-high-energy yet)
and 1980 (not quite the 80s yet)
Then you've got the middling years like 1993-4, '93 having some great Europop/dance and 1994 the early Britpop pioneers. In general the mid-80s sit awkwardly between the brilliance of the early and late part of the decades.
Worst era 2004-2008. Didn't take to a lot of that indie sound and spent most of those years listening to 80s/90s music, or synthier stuff from Europe. I don't know enough about music made before 1980 to properly comment on it
Primarily due to high turnover of manufactured pop, ten-a-penny urban/rap/Eminem & reality talent show puppets.
Best era for me 1986 - 1991.
Anything 1985 and before makes me feel old.
1989 - 1993 i think is my favourite time period...so many of my favourite artists released opus albums across this time...so much variation around too....save for S/A/W obviously!
Then i would say 1979 - 1984 seemed like a massive 5 year stretch of change up on sounds and dynamics musically...Post-Disco, Punk sounds...blurring identities etc.
Then 1998 - 2006...the turn of the milenium to mid decade i feel was a continuous flow of massive albums, hits, songs and again yeah some duds and moments but on the whole so many memories formed across this time period too.
Then finally 1968 - 1974 around this time with Soul, Funk, Progressive Rock/Psychadelic Rock blurring identity and angst in the air...a real slick flow of sounds and dynamics.
My least favourite time period i am uncertain of....the mid 90s...94 - 97 seem like a blur of ideas/concepts but nothing massive in pull factor bar a few spikes....and 2008 to now seem to have severe highs and lows really.
79-81 was definately the time where there was the most variety. there was doo-whop and rockabilly too.
you disagree that the mid 70's were terrible? but you stopped your golden era at 74, not 76, so even you doesnt rate 75-6 that highly! :D
erm, technically its uk garage, a garage itself is something completely different!
eh? didnt have any identity?
the early 90's are far from being my fav eras, in fact they are among my least favoured years ever, (89, 90, 92,93 my bottom 4), but to say there was no identity is misguided.
there was grunge, ragga, rave, indie/alternative, all styles that were popular and defined that era.
erm.... there was loads of manufactured pop and pop puppets 86-91, due to our old freind/fiends stock aitken and waterman, the guys who popularised manufactured pop puppets...
Late 50's/Early 60's - Stuff like Dion and the Belmonts, Del Shannon, The Shadows
1984 - 1986 - Some good music around the mid 80's with new wave and synthesizers
1989/early 90's - Some good dance music with acid house
Mid 90's - Brit pop
1998 - 2001 - Good house/dance music, perhaps my favourite era - Daft Punk, Phats & Small, Fatboy Slim, Stardust, Roger Sanchez
2004 - 2007 - The Killers, Razorlight, The Automatic
2012/2013 - Daft Punk, Duke Dumont, Rudimental, Disclosure, Imagine Dragons etc. There's some good dance music about right now as well as other stuff like Vampire Weekend and The 1975
Not so good -
1987 - 1989 - A bit boring to be honest, people like Jason Donovan
2002 - 2004 - Boy bands, girl bands, Gareth Gates
2008-2010 - I didn't like the charts in this era with artists like Lady Gaga.
1980 - 2007 : Nice actual standard of Pop music
1992 - 2002 R&B during its good days.
1994 - 2009 : Decent Dance/Club music during these times.
1995 - 2011 : Amazing years for Trance Music
1996 - 2009 Fantastic years for House music
1998 - 2005 : Great years for Rock/Alternative Music
Not so golden -
2003 - present - R&B became more hip hop oriented and became commercialised this year along with a decline in quality.
2007 - present - Pop music lost its soul and uplifting sounds and became merged with EDM although i do like Electronic Music but the producers behind the tracks make very poor watered down dance music which also gives Dance music a bad name when realistically its Dancepop which should be a sub genre of Pop music and not Dance music eg : Lady gaga , David Guetta , Avicii , Afrojack , Calvin Harris etc..
2005-present - Rock isnt as good as it used to too much dullness to it nowadays.
2009-present - House music became more diluted and bland mainly because of the commercialisation to the genre due to the rise of Guetta , Swedish House mafia almost every producer copies their sounds and even worse their sounds have also influenced Trance producers.
2011-present - Trance music took a turn for worse in 2011 when we got producers like W&W making horrible tracks with alarm sounds and very loud sounds which makes modern Trance music today crap along with the merger of House music and forming the new sub genre - Trouse.
Trance never used to be crap before 2011 , I still am a massive fan of Trance but only from the years i listed above although there does seem to be decent underground stuff still around but very small amount of releases on small labels.
It's clear there isn't a lot of agreement on eras because different genres have different highs and lows at different times and those who narrow things down to a single year are not really talking about an era.
BUT, if there is one malign influence in modern pop it has to be SAW. And they operated from about 1988-91. Yet even as Waterman and co were creating the truly awful manufactured pop we still partly live with, you had the Madchester scene with The Mondays and The Roses.....
It was a fair bit longer than that actually, they were active from 1984 to 1993, having their first number 1 single with Dead Or Alive in early 1985. So their presence spanned over a decade!