Which Decade Had the Most Influential Music?

Ever wonder which decade of music best revolutionized the world? It’s one that can muster great arguments with music fans. Each decade has a soundtrack, whether that’s 1950s’ birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll to 2010s’ streamed-out singles of pop music.

But whose decade’s music did most to change us, to feel us, to even make us think? In casual discussion, fans will don those 1960s and 1970s boots to praise 1960s’ revolution and 1970s’ creation of new genres, just as others point to 1980s’ glamorous MTV-facilitated global mega-pop giants, not to mention 2000s and 2010s for wholesalechanging consumerism of sound within this new digital era.

The verdict is a close one, and there can’t be one right one – after all, one individual’s soundtrack to those decades can be quite unique to one who delights in that decade’s heroics as well as heroins. What we can do is go decade by decade to consider each period’s musical contributions.

That isn’t comparing who had those great tune-y bites with most-selling albums but rather influence: new noises and innovations those decades introduced, cultural trends those ones galvanized, political stances raised by those ones, and those technical ones to fully change making as well as listening to those noises that are music.

Beyond just U.S. and U.K.-chart spotlight, let’s look at how, decade by decade, those who made sound made music around this globe – Latin dance halls to Jamaican rager parties to Korean arenas devoted to all things K-pop. Afterwards, let’s consider whose decade best impressed us with lasting impact and why.

So let’s position this needle of this musical time machine into play to see this decade by decade with emphasis upon its all-important soundtrack characteristics beginning with a time when rock and roll was just a sprout.

1950s: The Birth of Rock and Youth Culture

A 33⅓ RPM vinyl LP – a new record that mediated 1950s musical change.
The 1950s were a musical Watershed Moment. The decade witnessed a spectacular transformation from soft swaying of classic pop to the galvanizing beat of rock and roll.

Rock trailblazers such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly borrowed African-American blues and R&B rhythms, infused them with a country accent, and produced an explosively new sound. Rock and roll did more than make folks dance – rock and roll shook up societal sensibilities.

Teens owned this music as their own, resisting their parents’ swing music. Elvis’s performance style of hippeting stunned conservative adults, but that only served to make teens adore it even more.

Presley’s success, indeed, helped breach color barriers with his inclusion of traditionally black R&B songs in mainstream charts.

Overnight, white teens were nodding along to black performers and vice versa, an unconscious but genuine challenge to this period of segregation.

Aside from rock, the ’50s gave us the seeds of myriad genres. Soul music came into being this decade (thanks to titans like Sam Cooke and young James Brown). Jazz had a golden era too – just look at Miles Davis and John Coltrane experimentation with cool and bebop jazz.

On a tech note, vinyl LPs as a standard release made for an album-friendly terrain. Portable transistor radios arrived as well, so young ones growing up in the ’50s could keep a rock station beneath the pillow at night. Culturally, this was monumental: music was fast-becoming young people’s shared identity.

And this wasn’t merely an American trend – around the world, new rhythms were fermenting. In Brazil, bossa nova’s cool inflections emerged in late ’50s and spread rapidly around the world. Cuban mambo and cha-cha-cha made audiences dance all around Latin America and US ballrooms.

By decade’s end, rock and roll had ignited a fuse that would burn bright in the ’60s, giving young people a lasting voice and a beat that symbolized freedom.

1960s: Rock Revolution, Social Change, and Global Sounds

The 1960s are most typically remembered as a decade when change and music were immensely intertwined. Rock music changed at dizzying pace – from Beatlemania’s mop-top elation to Jimi Hendrix’s psychedelic riffs within years.

Historians identify the ’60s as when rock finally became a real countercultural force with giants like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones at its center. Anthems that were previously just romance anthems were now protest and change anthems.

Folksingers like those who emanated from American folk and rock waged war with Vietnam and proclaimed for civil rights – Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” were anthems of civil rights.

Peace, love, and rebellion anthems stormed at great festivals like Woodstock 1969, when hundreds of thousands gathered at a muddy meadow to celebrate at togetherness and music. It was a time when, as one music historian says, “traditional barriers fell and youth music exploded”.

Indeed, protest anthems made up a huge part of pop heritage, especially as transistor radios and new cassette tapes made music ever-more accessible everywhere.

Musically, the ’60s did not rest either. Early in the decade, Motown soul’s rich harmonies (e.g., The Supremes, Marvin Gaye) got us dancing in streets all around the globe.

Mid-decade, the British Invasion (The Beatles, etc.) absorbed rock ‘n’ roll as global phenomenon, inspiring Japanese “Group Sounds” groups and Mexican Latin rock as well. Rock itself splintered into subgenres: folk-rock (think Simon & Garfunkel), psychedelic rock (The Doors, Pink Floyd), and so forth.

The concept of the “album” as cohesive art form really took off – The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) transformed a collection of songs into an immersive whole. Around the same time, new genres were blooming all around the globe.

Reggae and ska were born late in the ’60s in Jamaica to provide a laid-back offbeat beat that later took the globe by storm. Brazil’s bossa nova and pan-Latin Nueva canción folk movement indicated that music could be political vehicle far beyond Anglo-American sphere of influence.

And let’s not forget tech wizardry: multitrack recording and studio experimentation (thanks to producers like George Martin) created sound never before achieved, from psychedelic guitar effects to Phil Spector’s rich “Wall of Sound.”

Overall, the 1960s made huge impact – it helped us learn that music could shed light upon social change while also maturing to be global language all its own.

1970s: Genre Explosion and Cultural Crossroads

The 1970s were an immensely fertile decade for music – a sprawling crossroads at which almost every modern genre either began its life or achieved peak form.

If the ’60s built the rocket, the ’70s launched it to other galaxies. The decade “saw the birth of punk, new wave, hip hop, funk and electronic music,” all within a few years.

In New York City 1973, Bronx DJs created hip-hop at block parties by rapping and spinning – a humble start to a sound that went global. Down at street level, downtown, punk rock was being sparked by musicians like The Ramones and Patti Smith by thumbing noses at corporate arena rock with three chords and an attitude of DIY scrawn.

Across town in Britain, The Sex Pistols and The Clash made this punk uprising an epoch by proving that a two-minute protest song could be a raging force.

At the same time, black music branched off into new directions. James Brown and George Clinton offered us hard funk – rough, danceable rhythms that were later sampling grounds for hip-hoppers.

Soul music grew deeper and socially aware (Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971) dealt with turbulent times). Back at New York and Philadelphia discos, strings and basslines merged into one pool as disco, that inclusive genre that united everyone of all cultures under the mirror ball.

Saturday Night Fever made disco global by 1977, symbolizing the decade’s sense of escapism and permissive times (discotheques were one of very few public venues where LGBTQ and black/Latino folks mingled with everyone).

And who could ever forget rock? Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin’s heavy riffs fathered the genre of heavy metal, while Pink Floyd and Yes delved into far-off galaxies of progressive rock with concept albums and 15-minute epics.

Even reggae went global in the ’70s with Bob Marley’s unrivaled songwriting that disseminated his message of unity and protest far beyond Jamaica.

A traditional cassette audio tape – that portable media source that dominated the 1970s and 1980s. Culturally and politically, the 1970s used music as both a mirror and a hammer.

The Vietnam War ended but not before millions of rock and soul tracks had condemned it; for one, funk collective War and folk icon John Lennon both pleaded with us to “give peace a chance.” Across the water, African musicians merged traditional with jazz and funk – Nigeria’s Fela Kuti fathered Afrobeat within the ’70s, using music to attack political corruption.

In Latin New York, salsa boom leader Fania Records made Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Latin rhythms a source of rebellious new sound that created a “before-and-after” phenomenon within Latino music around the world. On the tech end, the ’70s introduced us to the cassette tape (and classic mixtape phenomenon) and inexpensive synthesizers.

Instantly music became easier to transport beyond home audiences and its electronic timbres made a move into pop – from robot rhythms by Kraftwerk within Germany to Donna Summer’s 1977 synth-disco classic “I Feel Love.”

By decade’s end, you had your hard rock, punk, disco, reggae, early hip-hop, EM and more all living together. Few are surprised that most folks argue that the 1970s were the most influential decade ever – the decade played like an incubator, birthing musical genres that’d go on to inform subsequent 40+ years of international music.

1980s: MTV, Megastars, and Global Pop

Whereas the 1970s opened up the playbook, the 1980s went transnational with a razzle-dazzle production. The decade was all about larger-than-life sound and larger-than-life visuals – and that little thing that came along with 1981, dubbed MTV, did a great deal to make music a 24/7 visual business. Instantly, image and style could not be severed from sound.

Global stars such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince were masters of this new game, utilizing music videos to appeal to all around the globe. Michael Jackson’s Thriller, for one, wasn’t just a best-selling album in 1982 – innovative videos (and dance steps such as Moonwalking) made him a global icon.

MTV similarly catapulted British acts (the “Second British Invasion” of new wave/synth-pop acts) to stardom within America and vice versa and truly made pop go global. Mid-decade, Live Aid (1985) illustrated just how transnational music had become: this mega charity concert relayed rock and pop titans such as Queen and U2 by way of satellite to 1.9 billion televisions around the globe, with 150 countries united as one for 24 hours via music.

Musically, the ’80s had its own eclectic sound. Synthesizers and drum machines were inexpensive and ubiquitous, creating that signature ’80s synth-pop sound (think Depeche Mode, a-ha, or electro-funk master Afrika Bambaataa).

Rock music did not perish – it degenerated into polished arena rock and raw underground scenes. On one end, you had stadium-crowd-roaring rock bands (Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses) and explosion of late ’70s/early ’80s that would spawn glam metal with gigantic hair and bigger guitar solos.

On the other, alternative rock seed was sown by college radio stalwarts R.E.M. and The Smiths. Hip-hop transformed from its proto-state in the ’70s to a force to be reckoned with by the late ’80s: Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy brought rap to mainstream ears, and by 1989 its cultural and commercial impact could not be ignored.

Actually, hip-hop’s late ’80s discovery of selling more copies than most rock releases signaled a shift of public sentiment that would blossom later. Technologically, the ’80s listening process most definitely was influenced by technology.

The compact disc (CD) arrived in 1982 with promises of perfect digital sound and longevity. By decade’s end, CDs and cassette-player-enabled Walkman devices were de rigueur – 8-tracks and vinyl were extinct, and cassette mixtapes were how folks shared emotions with one another.

The music industry went crazy as fans re-bought albums in CD form (and labels made a pretty profit off this new vessel). The decade also maintained a conscience: mega-collaborations like “We Are The World” and events like Live Aid illustrated that music could be a force for great altruism and activism.

Anti-apartheid anthems, Amnesty International concerts, and protest anthems like Nena’s “99 Luftballons” (objecting to Cold War buildup) signaled that ’80s musicians were socially aware even as they raved with us.

Internationally, the idea of “world music” took hold – Western ears discovered African pop (e.g. Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé), Latin rock, etc., thanks partly to performers like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon recording with others from other cultures.

By 1989, music not only had conquered every nook and cranny of the globe via satellite TV and MTV, but also paved the way for that digital revolution that would arrive around the corner.

1990s: Diversity, Digital Beginnings, and Global Mashups

The 1990s were a decade that reconciled diversity of genres with beginning steps of the digital revolution. If you were listening to a ’90s radio (or channel-surfing to MTV between clips of Beavis and Butt-head), you’d witness spit-out-your-coffee variety: grunge rock, sleek R&B, gangsta rap, teen pop, techno, country, ska punk – all flourishing at once.

The decade when “alternative” music went mainstream, courtesy of acts like Nirvana. When Nirvana’s Nevermind hit #1 in 1991, the distorted guitars of grunge officially pushed aside the ’80s hair-metal varieties.

Teens discovered an anthem to Generation X angst with songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and the look (flannel shirts, anyone?) followed suit. Across the Atlantic, the U.K.’s ’90s responded with Britpop (Oasis, Blur), giving Brit teens a soundtrack of working-class swagger and cheeky bravado.

At the same time, hip-hop and R&B climbed to number-one spots and best-seller status by the mid-90s. The ’90s landscape of rap was dominated by ruthless storytelling and beefs – the East Coast-West Coast feud between rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. went down in legend.

Towards the end of the decade, such acts as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Wu-Tang Clan, and Lauryn Hill cemented hip-hop as not just music, but as a cultural cornerstone of global youth culture.

R&B voices Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Boyz II Men bestowed soulful crooning upon massive pop audiences, often hand-in-hand with hip-hop beats. And let’s not overlook the pop – late ’90s experienced a reemergence of bubblegum pop and teen heartthrob acts.

The Spice Girls (U.K.) and boy bands Backstreet Boys and ’NSYNC (U.S.) reigned supreme, offering up upbeat, slick anthems that had preteens (and not a few adults) singing along around the globe. Such acts confirmed that all that paparazzi-frenzy MTV pop stardom still reigned, even as new trends continued to emerge.

Most significantly, the 1990s were when technology snuck up (and then not-so-sneakily) transformed the playfield. Early within the decade, we still pushed “rewind” on cassette tapes as well as busted out CDs. By year-end, MP3 files as well as the internet flipped all that around.

In 1999, a small app by the name of Napster let people share music files for free, panicking the record business as well as previewing physical media extinction. The compact disc enjoyed one final stand-off (the late ’90s were a best-sales-ever period for CDs), but digital music distribution’s sheer efficiency was unmistakable – a genie that couldn’t go back within the bottle.

Even before Napster, the ’90s spawned transportable MP3 players as well as CD burning, previewing that music ownership would be moving from shelf to the hard drive. Globally, the ’90s linked music scenes as never before as well. Electronic dance music (EDM) went bananas – from all those techno as well as raving scenes that existed within European capitals to global blasts of house music DJs.

By that late ’90s, mega-dance events were drawing audiences within Europe as well as everywhere else, as well as electronic rhythms were infusing themselves within pop as well as within hip-hop creation.

Latin music enjoyed a breakout year within 1999 as Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” as well as Santana’s Supernatural album (featuring that addictive “Smooth” tune) made numbers one as well as two, beginning a so-named “Latin explosion” within mainstream pop.

All these threads made that 1990s a rich patchwork within music background – a decade rather challenging to define with one sound, but unmistakable within its impact as this laid background to that fully digital, borderless music globe we’d step into within this new millennium.

2000s: Digital Revolution, Genre Blending, and the Rise of the Internet

By the 2000s, music lived in two worlds: the physical past and the virtual future. Early in the decade, most of us still browsed CD sections at record stores; late in the decade, we downloaded tracks (officially or not) onto iPods. The digital revolution devastated the music business all decade long.

The decade got underway with Napster aftermath – after lawsuits shuttered its original site, new digital platforms sprouted up. Apple’s iTunes Store opened its virtual doors in 2003, finally giving us an easy, legal way to buy MP3s à la carte.

The iPod (a snazzy white slab that could hold “1000 songs in your pocket”) became this decade’s must-have product, symbolizing the shift to transportable digital catalogs. CD sales dropped off a cliff – U.S. album sales lost billions of dollars as fans stopped buying $15 albums and started buying 99-center singles or finding songs for free elsewhere.

The business had to adapt to survive. Record labels by mid-decade were grasping that licensing to new digital platforms took priority, and that ringtones (who could forget those?) and later streams would be huge earners. The balance of power also shifted to the artist: you no longer needed a grand studio to record (affordable home recording programs like Pro Tools and GarageBand let musicians make high-quality recordings using a laptop).

Promotion also changed – MySpace and later YouTube (launched 2005) let performers create audiences by means of the web. The decade created stars discovered via the internet, from Arctic Monkeys (the early MySpace breakout band) to Justin Bieber (who famously rose to prominence via YouTube as a kid).

Just, the 2000s utterly redefined music consumption’s how/where. One 2008 industry report summed up this transformation thusly: “paid digital downloads grew fast, but did not compensate for loss of CD sales” – indicative of just how drastic this transformation was.

Of course, beyond commerce, 2000s music soundtrack was lush and cross-pollinated. Hip-hop took total dominion as a top genre worldwide – by 2003, rappers such as Eminem, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent not just ruled charts but set trends and slang everywhere around the globe.

Hip-hop also diversified: 2000s witnessed proliferation of Southern “crunk” and trap (the antecendents to present-day Atlanta sound), the decade of bling, and consciousness (Kanye West, for one, combined soulful rhythms with sociopolitic ballads mid-decade).

Pop music tipped into R&B and hip-hop sensibilities to a great extent – this decade beheld Beyoncé’s ascendance as a solo icon, and producers such as Timbaland and The Neptunes embedding hip-hop beats within all of pop’s biggest smash-hits.

The late 2000s also gifted us with the pop icon of Lady Gaga and genre-bending by OutKast (who achieved a #1 hit with one song “Hey Ya!” that combined funk, rap, and classic pop with something completely new). Rock music did not perish – the “garage rock” revival positioned guitars back atop radio with acts such as The Strokes and The White Stripes returning raw sound to airwaves.

The indie rock and emo bands (Death Cab for Cutie, Fall Out Boy) amassed huge fanships, disclosing rock’s splintering into niches. And with bizarre twists, around end-of-decade a couple of rock acts reached #1 by hybridizing with other genres (Linkin Park’s rap-rock, one).

Global influences in the 2000s kept growing, previewing the even bigger cultural melting pot of the 2010s. Latin music kept mainstreaming – Shakira and Enrique Iglesias crossovered successfully to English markets, while Spanish-language reggaeton went viral across the Americas (Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” gotnightclubs grooving from San Juan to New York City in 2004).

Meanwhile, all around Asia, there were K-Pop idols racking up enormous regional fandoms and just beginning to glance Westwards (the Wonder Girls even achieved a U.S. chart position all the way back in 2009).

The dance/electronic genre previewed an EDM invasion to come a decade later: dance festivals like Tomorrowland (Belgium) and Electric Daisy Carnival (U.S.) were drawing hundreds of thousands, while DJs like Tiësto and David Guetta were establishing themselves as super-producer stars, a foreshadowing that ten years later there’d be fusions between pop and EDM to make up for everything this decade lacked in terms of straight-ahead pop/rock hooks.

By 2009, we also experienced growing modes of streaming service-enabled music dissemination (Spotify launched Europe in 2008) – albeit still a couple of years before streaming tipped downloads, by then an all-you-canager model could only have been tempting.

Politically and culturally, there were still galore music commentary acts too – post-9/11 songs ranged all the way from Toby Keith’s flag-waving country anthems all the way to Green Day’s punk-opera protest album American Idiot denouncing war.

Overall, 2000s were years of sheer transformation: how we obtained music altered completely, even as all that music fractured into manifoldstyles – all preparing us for the hyper-connected 2010s.

2010s: Streaming Dominance, Global Fusion, and New Voices

The 2010s will likely go down as the decade when music officially arrived as one boundless, streaming-enabled experience.

Owning music by this time made most folks feel nostalgic – why buy/download singles while millions of songs are a screen-touch away via phone? Actually, indeed, on-demand streaming via service such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube went on to be peoples’ main way of soaking up music, creating up to around 80% of industry revenues by decade-end.

More than merely altering the way that we pay for music, this upturned the whole discovery and stardom cosmos of music. The playlist took over from radio DJ – algorithmically created, by curation, by DJ sets with livestreams, by producers with proprietary playlists, playlists made unknown tracks overnight smashes and reinvigorate decades-old anthems with random viral surges.

A track could go stratospheric on a streaming playlist or via a TikTok meme (mid-to-latter end of decade) with no classic marketing involved at all. The pitch levelled somewhat, affording non-WW/US-indiedom and foreign acts like never before a shot at worldwide fans at a worldwide level along with them.

Social media further eliminated borders between stars and fans – a Korean boygroup could trend globalllly(yeah that’s a word) via Twitter, a SoundCloud rapper could gain millions of fans without being bound to one, and an R&B crooner who just so happened to be Nigerian could go viral via Instagram, all within one year of one another The end effect? The globalization of pop went into hyperdrive We didn’t just import that occasional “world music” novelty item; by late 2010s, international genres were dominating charts at a mainstream level like never before.

A smartphone with the Spotify app – 2010s decade symbol that planted millions of songs in our pocket.
Musically, genres in the 2010s merged and blended until lines increasingly blurred. Hip-hop and R&B officially took over from rock as America’s most dominant genre around 2017, cementing a process that took decades to reach.

And hip-hop as a genre completely evolved massively: trap music’s (808-bass-booming, hi-hats-skittering style) emergence not only cemented Atlanta’s sound but became pop’s trend du jour – even non-rap acts were utilizing trap drums.

We also saw the “SoundCloud rap” subgenre giving birth to new stars with a raw, DIY sound (artists like Post Malone and Lil Uzi Vert started this way).

Pop music from the 2010s took serious EDM influence in its earliest years (see those perennial drops by singles by the Chainsmokers or latter days of the Swedish House Mafia). Mid-decade, though, saw pop make a switch to a minimalist, moody sound with acts like Billie Eilish.

One huge cultural shift was women in hip-hop and pop rising to center stage – from Nicki Minaj and Cardi B in rap to mega-singers like Adele, Taylor Swift (who dominated album charts and even took on streaming giants to fight artist rights), and Beyoncé, whose 2016 visual album Lemonade was at once a cultural and political milestone (celebrating black womanhood and black culture).

Talk of politics and all that, the latter part of the 2010s saw musicians championing causes: songs that addressed Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ anthems, and acts cancelling shows to protest unjust laws were de rigor, proving that music still very much belonged to the social discussion.

Globally, this decade made the “world” of music one reality. The best exemplar may be with K-Pop’s breakout to global superstardom.

South Korean groups like BTS transitioned from faithful niche fandoms to toplining Billboard charts as well as selling-out arenas all around the world.

Especially, BTS set records (most Twitter interaction, 1st-ever US #1 album by a K-Pop artist, etc.) and proved non-English music could be greeted with equal admiration all around the globe. Competing that success, Latin music achieved a record-breaking milestone with “Despacito” in 2017 – the reggaeton-pop phenomenon by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (and later Justin Bieber as a remix version) equaled longest #1 hit ever on Billboard Hot 100 and reached tops in 47 countries.

Furthermore, that one garnered billions of streams and achieved all-time most-streamed vid ever. The latter one symbolized Latin music’s second breakout, marking times when tracks like “Mi Gene,” “I Like It,” and “Taki Taki” – primarily Spanish-languagewise – were mainstream successes. Latin trap and Afrobeats from Africa genres also took over pop – by the end of the 2010s, one could habitually hear Nigerian Afrobeats beat (Wizkid, Burna Boy) as well as Colombian reggaeton beat within your daily Top 40 playlist.

The other interesting change occurred with f lashpoint that collabos went international borders: US rappers with Latin vocals, British/Korean producers collab-ing – by this time, regional scenes’ dichotomous conception blended to make this one global musical universe.

Technologically, streaming and social media had one additional impact: unbundling the idea of “the album” as central unit. Singles- and viral-hit-centered acts were plentiful (because streams rewarded continuous play of singles), and genres like EDM and hip-hop were receptive to constant single release and features.

The 2010s also saw the end of physical media for most of us – vinyl experienced a cult renaissance with fans, but the CD ended up as museum exhibit. Incidentally, the war fought by the industry versus piracy essentially died down as streaming offered a convenient alternative, and by 2019 global music sales were growing again after years of decline, thanks to paid streaming subscriptions.

On balance, the 2010s left us a musical cosmos that was always-on, always-everywhere – that song from anywhere could go viral if there came along that right 15-second dance challenge on TikTok. The decade belonged equally to consolidation (a few giants distributing most music) and explosion (an unprecedented multiplicity of voices achieving global followings).

Conclusion: The Biggest Musical Impact – And the Winner Is…

Looking back at this panorama of decades of music, it becomes clear that each decade brought with it a huge legacy. The 1950s gave us rock’s origins and adolescent culture; the 1960s revealed that music could change hearts and mirror revolution; the 1970s unleashed a torrent of new genres; the 1980s offered global pop unity and tech sparkle; the 1990s democratized the scene and planted digital seeds; the 2000s disrupted the industry with the internet; and the 2010s made music bigger and broader than ever before.

Most influential of all, then, which decade? There isn’t quite an objectively right answer, but if we balance everything – musical breakthroughs, cultural and political impact, tech influence – there’s one decade that outstrips all others: the 1970s.

The decade, in effect, built the arsenal for today’s music. The article here states that the ’70s gave us punk, hip-hop, electronic, funk, and did so as a precursor to every subsequent huge trend that ever followed.

Indeed, without the 1970s, perhaps we wouldn’t possess those beats upon which ’80s and ’90s hip-hop took flight, nor that electronic marrying upon which today’s pop and EDM are built.

The socially conscious music didn’t die with end of play of the ’60s – it evolved with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat protests, shaping how that music can be used for commentary to this day.

That aside, not being at the top of the ’70s doesn’t dismiss that other decades had profound influence. You can easily argue that the 1960s had the greatest cultural impact – that’s the decade that taught the world to look to music as a force for peace, love, and protest, and that created endlessly durable icons (the Beatles, etc.) who still influence artists to this day.

Or take the 1980s, which redefined the way music is seen and sold around the world (the music video/MTV phenomenon) and created the template of the modern pop superstar. Even the 2010s, though recent, changed pretty essentially the very definition of a music “market” – that decade eliminated borders of geography and of languages, perhaps extending global musical unity further than did any prior decade.

In reality, music’s influence is an accumulative narrative – one decade informs the one that follows it. The rock nonconformists of the ’50s paved the way for that decade’s social anthems of the ’60s, which made way for the genre-experimenting of the ’70s, which influenced that decade’s glossy sound of the ’80s, and so on and so forth.

By the 2010s, we dance to a compilation of all of them within a device that carries within its remembrance every decade that preceded it. The brilliance of music history is that there are always those “most influential” of events within every decade.

So while perhaps this period crowns its head upon that of the 1970s (thanks to its sheer volume of new innovations that still inform music to this very day), truth be told, the real winner is 2025’s listener – since we are privy to this rich tapestry that’s been formed by all of those individual decades upon which to delight us.

Ultimately, most influential music is that which stirs you – and happily, we have an entire jukebox of decades to choose from. So crank up that favorite track, whether year-dated decades past or present, and keep alive that sense of discovery around music that gets us all to keep grooving to one decade’s sound after that of another’s.

After all, as history attests, that one great influence waiting to swing around to create this new decade’s sound may just be around that corner waiting to happen.

Sources: Historic data and insights collected from various music historians and industry sources like Britannica and scholarly collections for technological and cultural context, and contemporary analyses like the 1970s cultural critique by El País, the 2021 Ipsos survey of most favorite decades, and the Recording Academy recap of 2010s trends, and others. Each decade summary incorporates various sources to highlight innovations (technical and musical) and cultural influence that created that decade’s lasting imprint.