1980s vs. 1990s - Which decade had the better music?

Which decade had the better music?

  • Total voters
    130
Darkavius said:
I say they botched Spanish Pop because looking back at a lot of Spanish Pop does not hold up in my opinion. Old Enrique Iglesias is okay and Selena is great but a lot of Spanish Pop especially once they crossed over to the big labels sucks. Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Shakira all had bad English language albums imo. It's disappointing to me because I thought the Spanish "Vuelve" album by Ricky Martin was good and Marc Anthony has some good Spanish salsa albums.

Maybe I just expected too much considering that other Spanish musicians before them had good records and albums such as Cypress Hill and Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine that crossed over into pop.
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Cypress Hill are American rappers.
 
80’s was a decade of pure cheddar, 90’s by murder death kill.
 
As far as terrific songs, not the production and the imagery BS, I can't think of a lot in the 90's that compares to the sheer volume of terrific, classic cuts. I could be very wrong because I stopped really following music past the 80's. As goofy as some of that shit was in the 80's George O'Dowd (Boy George) and George Michael and Duran Duran had some absoulely stellar shit that would be great no matter what type of instruments were used. Just terrific songs, the production sucks for me, meaning synths were and are cheesy. It was the sound of the day but god it hurt some great music. I always will believe that is the reason that MJ's Off The Wall will always be better than his bigger selling albums, the music was organic and full sounding.
 
Kevster said:
80’s was a decade of pure cheddar, 90’s by murder death kill.
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ok, but what are the greatest songs? 80's definitely was too fantastical though and lala for my and alot of everyone's tastes which is why the backlash was so ferocious in the early 90's. Grunge and Hip Hop both were responsible for decimating the main 80's acts, maybe Madonna notwithstanding (don't know much about her music). MJ, Prince, Springsteen all drastically sold less, Terence Trent D'arby, who really came along too late for that era had the bad luck of creating some of Rock's greatest music and having it totally ignored because his whole thing was passe by 92.
 
mozfonky said:
absolutely they did, I never thought much of that crap or the guys who made it. Not all of it was garbage, it never all is, but I never cared for it at all. I guess every era will have someone saying that "they ruined music" but I really think grunge and hip hop come the closest to taking the cake, the stuff that came after was pretty bad too and that goes on until the present day. Putting technology into everyone's hands hasn't seemed to help a bit even though it democratized it to an extent. Not everyone needs or should be heard and now there is way too much music out there, way too many wanna be stars, being a musician, it's really more pointless than ever.
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I think Grunge certainly has some good music not really a lot of the popular stuff was IMHO pretty generic, I think moreso than the punk/new wave in the late 70's and early 80's which had more room for interesting bands like say Talking Heads getting significant sucess.

Again I think it was less the music itself that really hurt things it was more that because Grunge(and Britpop) were "the alt scene going mainstream" what they really ended up being was "the alt scene selling out". That environment has been creating quality music since at least the mid 70's but so many lables got bought out by big media companies it killed a lot of its ability to come up with anything that new or interesting. The whole indie/grunge era just seemed like it went on way too long trying to sell the same thing, we didnt really get a "revolution" happen in the 00's to change things so much as this kind of music just slowly got worse and worse wearing out its welcome and was replaced by manufactured pop becoming much more dominant.
 
blackheart said:
Some of the 80s pop hits corniness is charming, I can't lie. But it's like every single song from that era is just corny as hell.

Also! Idk wtf was happening in recording studios in the 80s, but god damn the production in that decade was just atrocious. Even incredible bands, that I love deeply, like Fleetwood Mac, sounded like ass on their 80s records.
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That's exactly it about the 80s - corny. I even thought that when I was a kid (I'm 38).
 
I would say the 80s because there's really nothing I've liked since then that has come out. But the 80s were a massive step down from the 60s.
 
90s by far.

80s was a good decade for pop. But a lot of other music was still figuring out what it wanted to be.

90s is a golden age of metal, rap, punk, pop, alternative rock, even country figured out how to modernize itself (for better or worse). And we had Bevis and Butthead to talk over all of it.
 
Depends,

are we talking what was popular? If so 90s for sure.

That said, I've been on a 80s - hair metal and pop - listening spree lately.
 
Really depends what genre you like. 80's rock is it's own unique thing.
 
The 90s had more meaningful music imo whereas the 80s had fun, feel good music. The 70s had both. The 60s was just groundbreaking. Honestly, the 60s through to the early 2000's was incredible for music. After 2k, shit went downhill real fast. The last 2 decades have easily been the least memorable in music history. Downright trash for the most part.
 
Gutter Chris said:
90s

Midwest punk ska is where my heart will always be.
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Do you happen to remember the New Bomb Turks? I think they were from Ohio.
They came to California back in the day and were only playing at a 21 and over club when I was in high school.
My friends and I went downtown anyway because we were not going to be denied seeing this band (I still have their LP somewhere).
We watched from outside the window raging on the sidewalk, the band saw us and the lead singer came up to us from the other side and acknowledged us with a hell yeah brother kinda thing.
The bouncers didn't like this and closed the blinds on the window.
Not to be denied we immediately split up and snuck into the club from 3 different spots. It was right at the end of their set and the band rejoiced in us getting into the venue and called me up on stage and asked me what they should play for their last song. I of course said you gotta play Mr. Suit. He told me to take a stage dive, I did and we rocked out
One of the best shows I ever saw even though I wasn't allowed in.
 
spamking said:
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DLR ?


Always have a soft soft for him. Had tickets to go to a concert in London of his . Before I ducked out of work to go rock out I asked out this rather attractive woman I'd fancied for about 6 months . She said yes , we went out the next night. She's still here after 33 years..

I don't remember much about the concert as it felt like I was floating,except the tee shirt I bought was cool and DLR came either through the floor or was carried onto the stage.....I think.
 
The good stuff from both of those decades isn't on either of those playlists.
 
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