We always think about the 60's as the musical golden age.

According to the acclaimedmusic best of lists, the real golden ages were:
1965 - 1979
and
1990 - 1999

Hopefully music will become more interesting in the next decade !

I dont really think you make generalizations like that. For example in your first "golden age" 1974 and especially 1978 were weak years. There were a number of bad years in the 90s. Most notably in the later half of the 90s.

None the less, the "golden age" of rock and roll was almost certainly began in 1965 and ended in 1972. The LPs made in these years are far and away the best of the 20th century.

You are right that it is just a generalization.

I just find it interesting that there isnt much on acclaimedmusic from the 80's and 00's that looks like it will stand the test of time.

I always wonder whether popular/rock music has losst itss way, but I suppose you could have said that in the 80's and yet the 90's was so much better. Lets see if some very good stuff appears in the 10's.

Cheers

golden age(s) of rock for me are: 1965-1975 (we'll forgive 74) and 1991

i have no idea what the hell happened in 1991 (it was probably due to my birth) but it was good. that's not to say that i dislike the rest of the 90s (which is my second favorite decade). Sure, 77 brought about some awesome musical revolutions, it's just 65-75 had an obscene amount of masterpieces every year.

that being said my top ten doesn't really indicate that so strongly
3-60s
1-70s
0-80s
3-90s
3-00s

I hate saying that there is a hard cutoff for any "golden age". When I look at the top 5 albums from every year, from 1965-2008 on this website, they are all really, really good. Every single year. Depth may differ for every year, but people are putting out great music today, this is not a dark age.

Actually, I had a closer look at the Top 200 albums, which seems to still exclude 2008-09. If you look at the release dates, a more accurate split of golden ages would be:

1965 - 1979
and
1985 - 1994

(It seems apart from OK Computer the late 90's wasnt that strong.)

Bimbow, I used to think the 80s were a very weak decade as well, but then I checked out the site's 80s poll. There's actually a lot of good stuff in the 80s, particularly the trio of godly indie rock bands, The Smiths, Pixies, and Sonic Youth.

I think we have no idea what from the 00s will stand the test of time. Especially since the quality music has moved farther and farther away from the popular and the mainstream record industry has gone back to being single oriented.

Heck, you have to pay big parent companies like Clear Channel just to get your songs air exposure! There are lots of music fans who think newer pop music sucks, so instead of looking at sub-popular stuff they gave up on newer music entirely.

There are lots of 00s albums already that I would rank among the best rock albums ever made. Particularly from Radiohead and the White Stripes, but also a bunch of others. Most of the people on this board will have their couple of favorites, but probably not the same ones. Don't mistake lack of consensus for lack of quality.

Except the 80s as a whole have more albums and songs represented on this website than the 90s.

For me personally, I love 1972-1989 and 2001-present.