Which Decade Was the Best for Music? [POLL]

There's a debate raging in the Jack FM office -- maybe we're just inspired from all the recent presidential debates or something. But our debate has nothing to do with the economy, politics or binders full of women. It has to do with -- what else -- music.

Yesterday (October 18), Joe showed me an article Artvoice (yes, even though they dissed us, we still read them) ran last week that straight-up disses basically everything that came out of the '90s, musically speaking.

Keith Buckley, frontman for local-band-gone-national Every Time I Die, writes:

Holy [expletive], were the ’90s full of garbage. So much so that the band called Garbage was actually better than most. In retrospect, it seems to have been a time dominated by anything except content, and the evidence lies in 99 percent of anything written by Anthony Kiedis....Was Billy Corgan really so annoying all along and we were just making excuses for the abusive partner radio rock served as, or did he legitimately appeal to our need for something new? Was I lying to myself in order to fit in somewhere, or did I actually think that Crash Test Dummies song was catchy, so much so that I actively sought out and purchased a cassette single? And the Spin Doctors? Seriously?

Sure, Buckley notes that the decade produced "a few diamonds in the rough...who proved to be not only thoughtful and inspired but timeless as well," but still...harsh, man.

Joe, of course, knew this article would get a rise out of me because I've got a bad, bad case of '90s nostalgia. I drove five hours across the state in July for a bill that included Sugar Ray, Marcy Playground and Everclear, and two hours for a show headlined by the Barenaked Ladies. I actually listen to the entire New Radicals album (and enjoy it). And I've been known to rock Fiona Apple at karaoke.

Look, I will admit that the '90s produced an awful lot of crap, but so did every other decade. I mean, have you seen some of those music videos created in the '80s?! The '70s gave us disco music -- need I say more? And for every The Supremes and The Beatles, there's a one-hit wonder equivalent. You just don't remember all of that crap as clearly as you remember the '90s crap because the '90s were only 20 years ago!

But maybe I'm just jaded by my intense love of all things '90s. What decade do you think was the best for music?

Filed Under: nl, poll

Categories: Arts and Culture, Lifestyle