Wednesday Poll: Most Revolutionary Decade

If you look at the history of music, it's always been about leaders and followers.

Every 10-15 years (roughly) there was a major change of guard in the music world scene, bringing the young and ambitious up on top and leaving the old and outfashioned behind.

In today's poll we'll try to figure out which one of the decades contained more original breakthrough artists and songs. As usual, your thoughts on the matter are more than welcome below in comments.

So, here we go:

Comments

[Kriggs]

To me every decade was a revolutionary decade for music as it is constantly evolving. But in this poll I am resigned to say the 60's because thats when music started reaching out to a more global audience instead of the local regions/continents.

[krizzlybaer]

80's:
synths, as a huge extension
high Distortion guitars
more recording possibilities...

[billg111081]

90's for the huge amount of genres.
I know most existed already but there was a huge mix of punk, ska, swing, rock, metal, nu metal, goth metal, grunge, alternative, rap, hip hop, dance, techno, industrial... just a massive variety.

[Agent 00Awesome]

I think for metal it'd be the 80's. That's when all the sub genres really started emerging and and the genre branched out heavily. (thrash, black, death, power, hair metal, ect.)

[AnnihilationUK]

Tough call between 70's & 90's i'd say.

[Minivirus2]

70's. Many influential bands had their peaks throughout these years. Namely Rock/metal precursors, but the decade help set the stage for guitar driven music.

[Glass Prisoner]

70's laid the groundwork for everything thereafter, really. The 60's were the end of an era. Things only started to pick up in the 70's, post-Hendrix, post-Beatles.

[Maiden95]

I voted 60's mainly for the Beatles and Hendrix. Btw. I love the poll idea. More please.

[tonello]

I vote 80's. Those years to me, represented everything new. If not the 80's then the 60's.

[jameshudson92]

Who the **** would for 2000's?

[rockstar2be]

Without the influence of th 60s none of the other decades would have turned out like they did. The 60s also expanded musical boundaries far more than any other decade. Nevermind a variety of genres, the 60s created rock!

[bmarlatt1685]

jameshudson92 wrote:

Who the **** would for 2000's?

Fred Durst and Wes Boreland

[slapsymcdougal]

bmarlatt1685 wrote:

jameshudson92 wrote:

Who the **** would for 2000's?

Fred Durst and Wes Boreland

Limp Dipshit's best stuff was late '90s.

[PoorePlaysBass]

It's not an option in the poll, but 30's. Robert Johnson.

[Lightning_Ray]

PoorePlaysBass wrote:

It's not an option in the poll, but 30's. Robert Johnson.

Blues and (eventually after it) Rock N' Roll wouldn't exist without that man.

[PoorePlaysBass]

Lightning_Ray wrote:

PoorePlaysBass wrote:

It's not an option in the poll, but 30's. Robert Johnson. Blues and (eventually after it) Rock N' Roll wouldn't exist without that man.

Exactly. He may not have completely came up with the genre, but he is so influential in rock music 80 years later. You could make a family tree of amazing artists that have been influenced either directly by Robert or indirectly by those Robert influenced, and it would probably be larger than any other artist you could throw out there. I was thinking of him as soon as I saw this article.

[yoman297]

70's or 90's... tough call.

[Vitor_vdp]

I'd say 70s because of Progressive Rock, especially Gentle Giant.

[purplexing]

90's weirdest decade ever. Grunge, Rap-metal, Marilyn Manson, Boy bands, pop punk, Red hot chilli peppers, Jane's addiction, Industrial, death metal.

[Abacus11]

90's. Hands down. That's when musical styles really culminated and new genres were popping up left and right.

[Ottmeister]

80's got my vote cause of the birth of thrash.

[BreatheOver]

Minivirus2 wrote:

70's. Many influential bands had their peaks throughout these years. Namely Rock/metal precursors, but the decade help set the stage for guitar driven music.

Pretty much that. I was going to say the 90s because of Kurt Cobain and all, but he was just a very revolutionary person - not the whole decade itself

[EpsilonJSTC]

80s man. Punk exploded in all directions and rock music's never been the same. Though 60s and 70s were some pretty crazy times too.

[rhs5110]

60s was when really good music started being released but I think the 70s is what really got the ball rolling for guitar oriented music

[OtherGuy]

1720s man.
Nah I said 50s. The start of Rock and Roll pretty much set the bar for popular music to come

[rip3149]

I don't think you can say one decade is any more revolutionary than another. they each had their own independent revolutions. the 50s were a breakthru for original rock n roll. the 60s started the psycedelics and classic rock we know today as well as protest music and widespread country. the 70s gave birth to disco, metal, synth became more widely recognized in a lot of genres. 80s saw a huge surge in electronic pop music, forms of extreme metal, country started to develop into it's current state. 90s just turned everything upside down and spit it back out. 2000s have been revolutionary in their own right but also lost some of the originality that the 90s had.

point being the most influential decade was probably the 30s. ROBERT JOHNSON

[rob904]

...no option for 1830s...Chopin was the man.

[TOOLeffingTOOL]

I believe that today's music is not considered to be as influential because it is so readily available, in the 60's not everyone had a way to listen to music in their households. There was no iTunes, no YouTube, some peoples only view of a band or artist was the stage show that they put on.
It is very hard in today's world because our society has become one of "get what you want when you want it"

[TJWhonley]

Sabbath and Led zep were 70's. jimmy page and tony iommi are the most influential of all time, apart from (arguably) the beatles. so my answer is the 70's

[andyscoot]

60s for music, 70s for film.

[ZStardust2012]

90s because everything was better in the 90s

[DarkWolfXV]

80's - death metal.

[BoozeforRemedy]

70s - Black Sabbath

[donstr888]

In my opinion it would be the sixties because so many bands took rock and made it their own and expanded it. The seventies come in second because its the beginning of the raunchy era of rock. The eighties had a great breakthrough for metal but sadly weird synth pop shit knocked it down a bit.

[pantallica13]

DarkWolfXV wrote:

80's - death metal.

Hmm... Eighties was great for Death and Possessed, but you've got to admit the majority of classic death metal came out in the early nineties.

You're right about 87-89 for it though.

[joestrat5000]

Its hard to vote for this one. Rock n Roll became official in the 50s. Then in the 60s you had psychedelia, motown, early stages of punk and metal. The Beatles, Hendrix, early Pink Floyd. A lot of riff driven rock music in the 70s. Metal was revolutionizing in the 80s, and rap was begining to reach the mainstream. And all the variety of the 90s...skate punk, grunge, alt. rock, industrial, rap/hip-hop, boy bands, Nirvana, 2pac, Marilyn Manson, Green Day, Soundgarden, Blind Melon, etc. The list goes on and on.
Lets not forget about the 18th and 19th centuries

[RKOStyles]

It's either 60s or 70s for me just because outside of Nirvana/Grunge that's the only crutch the 90s has to stand on. I would however listen to an argument for 50s or 80s.

[leohimself]

it's probably not the 80s with all that hair metal, glam metal, synth metal and hair music.

[Revocati0n]

80's!!!
THRAAAAASH!!!!!

[DLMetal92]

It depends on what you mean by revolutionary. If you mean it by saying what decade made music globally popular then I would say the 60's. But like somebody said before, many influential bands were in their primes during the 70's so you could base it off influence too.

[liamthemetalfan]

EIGHTIES MAN! what about the rise of thrash metal, or metal in general, i know zeppelin and sabbath started in 70's but the 80's were awesome

[malstag21]

I'm going to go with 50s just because the way I see it rock n' roll really got an official start there with Elvis and such.

[Kueller917]

I'd say 60's because music really started expanding and it was following the actual youth revolution that was starting after the conformity of the 50's.

And seeing as the poll asks for music in general and not just rock/metal/the likes, I'd put 90's second because there were so many genres and styles that began to emerge beyond just tiny insignificant groups and that would continue to keep hold through the next decade even.

[Enix165]

I said the 80s, that's about when technicality started coming into major effect, and when boybands who rode on their looks more than their actual talent levels to get to the top started to eclipse the rest. And as I see it modern metal/hard rock's not much but that: boytoys and wanky shred.

That said however, the '60s were also pretty huge, the late 60s seem to have been when music really broke out of its little clean-cut, uniform, industry-controlled box. The 80s is when it started getting boxed back in though(as much as I love 80s music), and it continues to be boxed in.

[AbsolutionNL]

The fifties combined 'high art' with 'low art', which is one of the most revolutionary things that have happened or will happen to music.

[yearzero]

I don't know if it counts as revolutionary, but the 90's were a great time to be a music fan regardless of your genre of choice.

For me, it's hard to pick between the universal appeal of blues in the 20's or the groundwork for rock and roll that was the 50 or 60's. A great case could be made for any decade.

[GlacierMan]

Have to say the 60's. They had their amazing bands (the Who, Hendrx etc.), and many amazing 70's bands were founded in the 60's (Black Sabbath)

[stepco12345]

*Checked*

[thebigredjj10]

I would say the 70s. The 60s were the root of all the change, but in my opinion the 70s were where a lot of the change was fully implemented.

[LesThanPaul]

I think it depends on whether you're talking about whether it's influential in terms of today's rock music, or rock music in general. I think if you're talking about more modern music, then you would say the 90's just for variety and style reasons. But as a whole, probably the 50's rock n roll which eventually led to all other forms of rock music.

[Northernmight]

90'ies, because it moved both ways. It was like the free mindset reset into this very conservative arseness, but at the same time, the leading antiheroes of the day took it a step further.

[Picklelerner]

jameshudson92 wrote:

Who the **** would for 2000's?

Well consider the Internet Boom that happened in the 2000's. Within just that one decade, all music became easily accessible to the world. Just look at all of the musicians that started by posting quick videos on YouTube. I know I wouldn't have found nearly half of the music I love without the aid of the Internet. However, I took it from a more "musical" standpoint and chose the 60's. The Beatles fanfare and Woodstock were what mainly drove me to make that decision.

[6-String_Madman]

Metal started in the 70's. But we saw it's perfection the 80's.

And NO, I'm not talking about Glam metal.

[Shuei5]

70's, everything from huge stadium rock and some of the most complex music to punk. Also, early use of electronic and synth music, etc.

[Ridalgo]

It's totally '70s. The '70s were influenced by the past 3 decades, and the '60s were only influential in the second half of the decade.

[RadioMuse]

The 60s was the most important decade for popular music up until this point in terms of creating global audiences, venues, genres, and developing recording methods from basic 4-track machines up to 16 and 32-track units. Many of the most important and influential artists started, developed, and died out (either in popularity or actuality) during the 60s.

The Beatles and their support (management, promotion, recording production/engineering) alone created nearly enough innovations to rival any of the other decades. Experimenting with almost every available instrument, style, and technology available.

Led Zeppelin formed and released many songs that in retrospect are almost proto punk (Communication Breakdown) and paved a clear path towards metal. Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, and Black Sabbath basically laid out proto-metal. Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallanger, Carlos Santana and others, aforementioned and not, pushed the electric guitar to new heights and many of the drummers backing them pushed rock's rhythmic approaches into fresh territory.

The Doors brought on the dark melancholy, Cream invited jazz and blues to the pop party, The Who smashed instruments, windmilled guitars, and wove brilliant stories into some of the hardest rocking songs of their time.

And that's all without mentioning possibly the most brilliant individual songwriter in history (Bob Dylan), Motown, The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Dick Dale or any of the equipment. Marshall Amplifiers was founded, Fender, Gibson, Gretch, and Rickenbacker all debuted classic designs, the first high-power amplifiers were introduced (Fender Showman, first to 100 Watts, 110 dB), Moog invented the modern synthesizer, etc.

I will give you that if we could "skew" a decade something like 1964-1974 would probably be the best, but I would largely attribute the first half of the 70s to be an afterglow of the 1960s in terms of technologies, management, promotion, etc.

Other than Grunge and the alternative movement in the early 90s laying waste to hair metal and putting rock back in a position of power on the pop airwaves I can't think of any major "revolutions" after the 60s. Rather things tend to evolve with occasional outliers that break the mold coming along occasionally, influencing the major trends to follow. Individual genres and sub-genres have obviously had their 'revolutionary' albums, but few have really impacted the charts or overall direction of musical trends all that significantly.

I'd also venture a guess that either this decade or early the next we're due for a major musical culture change that's a bit more sudden than the creeping medium change to digital music. Culturally the Bush administration inadvertently created generation-X 2.0 in the United States, and hard economic changes world-wide are creating the kind of hardship that always results in creative venting...

[Campbell2727]

the most revolutionary decade was the 2000's the revolution being from the 90's to the 2000's music was good then it went shit

[GeekInThePink]

I would go with sometime in the late 1700's or early 1800's when Beethoven and Mozart were around.

[LesPaulGuy77]

Isn't 60's sort of a no-brainer?
The Beatles, The Doors, Hendrix, The Who, Dylan... I could go on forever, but the point is that the 60's were the creation of popular music.

[Galfadez]

70s and 90s definitely. The 70s was really the start of today's rock, not disrespecting all the great bands in the 60s. And 90s was massive, spread rock into more genres and added diversity. Metal itself changed massively in the 80s but I wouldn't put it up there with the 70s or 90s.

[rokr258]

The 50's CREATED ROCK N' ROLL. Without the 50's there is no rock. There is no metal. There is no punk. There is no rock music as we know it today in its many incarnations. Really the late 40's actually. Fats Domino, etc. You know who all of the influential artists of the 60's listened to? The jazz and blues of the 30's 40's and 50's. Read up on The Who and Jimi Hendrix. Those guys LOVED jazz and R&B. Before he died, Hendrix was going to do a record with Miles Davis. Not to mention Les Paul, the single most influential person, in my opinion, in the historical development of American pop and rock music. He did most of his work in the 50's. The counterculure that exploded in the early 60's was rooted in the disillusioned teenagers and racial tension (especially in music) of the 50's. Sure the 60's were probably the most revolutionary in the sense that it produced the first modern pop records, but all of that stuff would not have happened without the building blocks of the 50's. That's where it all began.

[Downfault]

The 50's were influential in the birth of more guitar driven music.
The 60's in a more political and societal way
The 70's in a more instrumental way
The 80's in a more technological way
But I would have to vote for the 90's because even though these other decades paved the way, the 90's spawned so much variety and originality which basicall paved the way music is now.

[-xCaMRocKx-]

90s beating the 50s? Seriously? Read a book.

I couldn't decide between 50s and 60s, I ended up deciding on 60s. My favourite era however is probably the 70s.

[RndyW0]

I have to say that I voted 60s because of Zeppelin and the Beatles and partially Sabbath. Hendrix as well of course but that goes without saying on a guitar based website when there is a poll for influential decades in music. The first 3 bands that I mentioned might well have had their careers getting a lot bigger during the 70s but all did start and produced records in the 60s, With Zeppelin releasing Zeppelin I and II during the 60s that is the main reason why my votes sits there.

[mafuhungy]

weeee a chance to hate on the 80's. It did produce some pretty magical shit but really it marked the beginning of the end of music and we all know it.

[martijnsurf]

revolution of rock is more in the 70's, stuff like blues and folk in the 60's

[St00pId]

I can add a vote as much times as I want...

[Elderer]

60d.

[calger14]

I put 80's. Yes the 60's started it all, but what use would it have been if the 80's didn't make it as big as it is now

[DarkWolfXV]

pantallica13 wrote:

DarkWolfXV wrote:

80's - death metal.


Hmm... Eighties was great for Death and Possessed, but you've got to admit the majority of classic death metal came out in the early nineties.

You're right about 87-89 for it though.

Yeah, its where death metal started, plus grindcore, so i would probably choose late 80's/early 90's if there was an option. I loved 80's Symphonies of Sickness, though, my second fav album. My fav is Necroticism.

[iup788]

PoorePlaysBass wrote:

Lightning_Ray wrote:

PoorePlaysBass wrote:

It's not an option in the poll, but 30's. Robert Johnson. Blues and (eventually after it) Rock N' Roll wouldn't exist without that man.

Exactly. He may not have completely came up with the genre, but he is so influential in rock music 80 years later. You could make a family tree of amazing artists that have been influenced either directly by Robert or indirectly by those Robert influenced, and it would probably be larger than any other artist you could throw out there. I was thinking of him as soon as I saw this article.

Robert Johnson was influential, but I think Muddy Waters was MORE i
influential

[Joshwalad]

The 60's.
- The Beatles. Most revolutionary band ever. Most recognisable songs and album covers ever. Had MILLIONS of fans worldwide pre-internet. Made music so good they kept fans even after straying from their pop roots. Try and argue that there's a greater band than the Beatles.

[Fourgiven]

I picked 70s, but i think music is constantly changing. however, the 60s and 70s were times that really defined music, especially rocknroll and all its branches

[Lord_Doku]

Every decade had its revolution. In the case of rock, it started in the 50's as rock & roll, but really picked up in the 60's.

So I guess....both ?