Which of the following decades produced the best music?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Pretty much anything from the 50s-80s, although the 90s and 1920s-40s had a lot of awesome music, too.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

It's interesting to think of jazz as an "art" music since was arguably the style of much of "pop" music from the 1920's through the 40's. Does that suggest later in this century rock may become an "art" music when some other style becomes the mainstay of "pop"?

I suppose that it's possible that, as rock music continues to recede in popularity, its shrinking fanbase becomes more discerning at the same time that what's being put out becomes more sophisticated (I'm fairly certain that that's what happened to jazz after all). Certainly, there's already plenty of rock music out there that has more in common with "art" music (whether jazz or classical) than it does with pop music.

Uh, I don't think so.  Rock has become such a massively popular and all-encompassing genre that new terms are needed to describe it; hence "pop," "metal," "alternative," and nearly any other term you hear bandied about now.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

It's interesting to think of jazz as an "art" music since was arguably the style of much of "pop" music from the 1920's through the 40's. Does that suggest later in this century rock may become an "art" music when some other style becomes the mainstay of "pop"?

I suppose that it's possible that, as rock music continues to recede in popularity, its shrinking fanbase becomes more discerning at the same time that what's being put out becomes more sophisticated (I'm fairly certain that that's what happened to jazz after all). Certainly, there's already plenty of rock music out there that has more in common with "art" music (whether jazz or classical) than it does with pop music.

Uh, I don't think so.  Rock has become such a massively popular and all-encompassing genre that new terms are needed to describe it; hence "pop," "metal," "alternative," and nearly any other term you hear bandied about now.

You say "now" as if this is some recent development, when in fact the terms "pop rock", "heavy metal", and "alternative rock" have been in use for decades. This is a function of the many different subgenres that have spun off from rock and roll, which was at one time the dominant force in pop music. Since the 1990's, however, rock music's relevance has steadily declined while country, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B have become more popular by the year. If this trend continues, it isn't hard to see rock becoming a niche genre in the way that jazz is today. My hope is that this would be accompanied by a kind of increase in sophistication that was visited upon the latter genre after its own decline in commercial popularity.

I simply meant since the 50s, the time when rock first became the dominant form of pop music.