After the sad events of this year I would like to propose the following are their decades musically:
1960s – The Beatles
1970s – David Bowie
1980s – Prince
Disclaimer: this is an arbitrary exercise and should not be taken as any final assessment of stature. But…
Their imperial periods are all neatly within these decades. We do cut off just before Scary Monsters…and there is the late rally, but pretty well DB is the seventies. I’ve been thinking who else can rival Prince for the 80s crown? Really only three: Jacko, Madonna and Springsteen.
Jacko – two albums – two monsters yes – but hardly an imperial period. And you lose Off the Wall.
Madonna – her best work straddles the mid-80s to 2000 – as strong in the 90s as the 80s
Prince – you have to lose Diamonds and Pearls, the squiggle album – er that’s about it. Otherwise in the 80s we get 9 albums in 10 years almost all of which are of the highest possible quality.
Springsteen – lots of great stuff over four albums (River, Nebraska, USA, Tunnel of Love) but like Madonna he’s as good in other decades.
So two questions:
Can anyone challenge the Paisley Park genius for the 80s crown?
And who is your nomination for the 90s – it used to be a truism that we would never agree on anything like we agreed with the Beatles. Now perhaps it might be we will never agree on anything like we agreed on Prince.
My nomination is Madonna. Already well into her prime with Like A Virgin, True Blue and Like A Prayer here’s the cream of her 90s output. She’s always been a singles act really and despite only releasing two copper-bottomed albums in that decade – Erotica and Ray of Light – there is a stellar run of singles:
Vogue
Justify My Love
Rescue Me
Erotica
Deeper and Deeper
Bad Girl
Rain
Frozen
Ray of Light
Drowned World (Substitute for Love)
The Power of Goodbye
Beautiful Stranger
That’s without anything from Bedtime Stories, Dick Tracey, Evita and sundry other soundtrack and greatest hits singles from the 90s. Not quite the haul of her forebears, but enough I think to make a good case. Music (2000) and Confessions from A Dance Floor were still ahead as well.
Radiohead?
I’d have Madonna over Prince in the 80’s and probably Jackson over both of them. Prince’s stuff is incredibly patchy throughout his career to my ears.
Not my cup of tea at all but Nirvana ruled the 90’s with their own three records and ongoing influence throughout the decade…
Yep. Nirvana are surely pretty much unchallengeable for the 90s thing, aren’t they? A debut in 1989, and two world-rogering follow-ups which set the tone for almost everything that followed. The trend for more “real”-sounding guitar music from great stuff to total shite in that decade is rooted in Nevermind.
As the decade closed, popular hip hop was beginning to rise to its current position as the global music, but the 90s belonged to guitar, bass and drums played by the artfully scruffy.
90s is Nirvana. Also: the Beastie Boys owned that decade, hard.
80s is Jacko, Madge, Prince – in that order. Metallica far more influential than Prince (who I love, before I get the hate), but hard to argue they’re the sound of the 80s.
If we’re looking beyond legit Afterword acts, and talking actual impact then Spice Girls and Puff Daddy should be on the 90s list and Prince should probably come off the 80s one.
Also – haven’t Led Zep sold several multiples of the records that Bowie has?
Think we may need to define what we’re after here: sales/legacy/quality?
Tiggs said Spice Girls too, and I really disagree. Johnny-come-latelies, apart from anything else, and while big in a sherbet-fountain-flash-in-the-pan type way, they didn’t change or influence anything. It’s a bit like saying the 2010s were the decade of loom bands. (And I LIKE the Spice Girls.)
Ha! at the loom bands.
Not going to launch into an impassioned defence of the Spice Girls (or Puffy); I loathed them and felt at the time that they blighted the back end of the 90s. I suppose that’s what leads me to nominate them: their sheer ubiquity, the rush of copycat acts, the way they fell in so very neatly with laddism, the solo careers… they were shite and they were everywhere, and that latter point suggests to me a degree of ownership of the decade. Happy to be talked down though.
So Jackson’s two decent-enough albums rank above the run encompassing 1999/Purple Rain/Around The World In A Day/Parade/Sign O’ The Times/Lovesexy/Batman? Not to mention Dirty Mind? I really, really don’t think so. Purple Rain is as iconic an 80s album as Thriller, for a start (if not necessarily in terms of sales). And both Jackson albums have their share of ‘patchy’ amongst the peerless gems. His best album by far was Off The Wall.
Nineties?
Worldwide, I’d say The Spice Girls. 2Pac died halfway through the nineties but that didn’t stop him making great records. PJ Harvey is a definite contender. Massive Attack made three classic albums. Personally, I prefer Radiohead from 2000 onwards.
The answer to your question is Björk. Yes, she has released some great albums since then but she was so different, so influential, so exciting, so awesome in the nineties, I don’t think anyone can touch her.
Oh Tiggs bless you.
The Spice Girls’ influence was nil. PJ Harvey is an irredeemably minor, though good, artist. (I say that as a huge fan of most of her output up until the lamentable and unaccountably well-reviewed sixth form dreck of Let England Shake).
Radiohead and Björk as choices at least aren’t hilarious, but they’re not really flag-carriers for an era, are they?
The Spice Girls -> group manufactured by a svengali -> ‘talent’ shows that have dominated TV across the globe. Musical value nil.
Polly’s and Björk’s influence, rather than sales, is pretty far and wide. Their musical quality in the nineties was tremendous.
I notice you didn’t immediately dis 2Pac.
Where is this influence, exactly?
There’s hardly an indie female voice that doesn’t sound something like Polly or Björk or both. Their absolute determination to follow their own paths impressed even the world’s biggest superstar, Beyoncé.
“There’s hardly an indie female voice that doesn’t sound something like Polly or Björk or both.”
Who?
Not often you talk bollox Tigs but above you have talked bollox of the highest order. As we speak the High Priestesses of Bolloxness is just starting the iniation ceremony – “ladies, gentlemen – please welcome our newest initiate. .”
I hear something of either or both in any of the following:
xx
Wild Beasts
Thus Owls
Torres
Tori Amos
Susanne Sundfør
St. Vincent
Sia
Robyn
Moonlake
Monoganon
The Knife
Lorde
Laura Mvula
Lana Del Ray
Kelis
Julia Holter
Jodie Holland
Jessy Lanza
Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas
James Blake
Grimes
Goldfrapp
Flying Lotus
FKA Twigs
Fever Ray
Emiliana Torrini
The Dead Weather
De Montevert
Chungking
Anna Calvi
Crikey. I seriously haven’t heard of any of those.
I’m still working my way through 1966.
Oh, hang on. Tori Amos. I have heard of her.
But she’s rubbish right?
Two of my faves could be added to Tigger’s list: Dublonde and Shiina Ringo.
As for Radiohead’s infliuence mentioned elsewhere – I always thought Muse were what they may have become if they’d stuck with the Bends’ sound rather than taking the left fork that was OK Computer.
Re. Radiohead, I know what you mean about Muse. Their first album is very, very Bendsy. But Radiohead take themselves way too seriously to do Muse’s panto-rock, and always have done. I think Muse are more musically similar to Jeff Lynne’s War Of The Worlds than Radiohead at this point.
I’m with @kid-dynamite on ver Head, despite my real liking for about 30% of their stuff. I don’t see their critical/influential star staying particularly high over time.
The only person in your list (out of the ones anyone has heard of) who sounds like PJ Harvey is Anna Calvi, Tiggs – she’s a fair Polly imitator whose career will be over in 5 years (decent first album, crap second). FKA Twigs is perhaps vaguely Bjorkish, but it’s tenuous.
Tori Amos is prior to/contemporaneous with Bjork and PJH, to the extent that they once shared a Q cover as “the new faces of feminist rock” under the riot grrl headline “Hips, Lips, Tits, Power”.
Robyn? Lorde? James Blake? Lana Del Rey? Julia Holter? KELIS? Now you’re just naming people at random.
Tori is contemporaneous but her only really good LP, From The Choirgirl Hotel, is very much Debut.
Julia Holter is Björk-like with her song structures and orchestrations. Kelis shares Polly’s rage. You seem to be underestimating the influence of Medúlla and Vespertine. Robyn, Blake, Lana, Lorde and FKA Twigs owe a lot to those two albums.
Have you heard De Montevert? She is absolutely a cross between Polly and Björk. If Anna Calvi is Polly influenced, so are Torres and Jessica Hernandez.
‘You seem to be underestimating the influence of Medulla and Vespertine’
What size and colour would you like your T shirt?
I haven’t heard De Montevert, sadly, but then I’ve always preferred Leicester University proper.
Disappointment Bob, you are a snob.
Nessie, I think purple is fetching, especially this month.
I think the world changed with the rise of plural media and the demise of a shared culture, so it’s much more difficult to have era-defining 90s artists given cultural worlds ceased to overlap. To which you can add – though I love the Dame and the Purple One – that the 70s could be as equally Rod Stewart or Stevie Wonder, neither of whom have produced much worth bothering with post 1980, and, in the 80s, Sting.
Arguments could be made for REM in either decade. The 80s’ development from being niche ‘college rock’ hipsters to arriving at the cusp of international success; the 90s witnessing their globe-straddling progress across the world’s sports stadia.
Radiohead for the 90s.
You could also mention Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Neil Young. Eagles and Springsteen for the 70s. Springsteen, Jackson. Madonna, REM and U2 for the 80s.
`60`s – Bob Dylan/The Beatles……both had as much influence as each other in that decade and as much influence on each other. OOAA.
`70`s – Led Zeppelin/the Punk Movement…….David B. was a quality artist and a major influence but not as much worldwide as those two, Once again OOAA.
`80`s – Prince……..no argument.
`90`s – Hmmm……..well no one from this country, Radiohead? Nothing original, one decent album, take your pick…….but talk to the average music fan and receive nothing but indifference. Brit Pop – They loved it on the football terraces. The States? Nirvana? Too small appeal base, Hip Hop, Grunge, any other musical genre, once again too small an appeal base outside the States. Once again Prince gets another decade IMHO.
The `00`s and the `10`s……same as the `90`s but this time no one including Prince casting a musical shadow over pop/rockdom……..but you Know what this is a `Golden Age`, whatever your taste you have more choice of quality?diverse music that any of the preceding decades. Not to mention the treasures being unearthed every day. Enjoy and be happy.
A rather concise view but so it goes.
Just to note: Nirvana have sold 75 million records. Twice as many as Radiohead.
Yeah, I hear you but the OP asked for influences also I think. Nirvana didn`t sell all those albums in the `90`s I bet. The `90`s was a very splintered decade musically, another concise comment.
Perhaps, but their appeal base was clearly not small. They were absolutely bloody massive.
Prince in the 90s? Have you actually listened to any of that stuff. He petered out pretty quickly.
Disagree. There’s loads of great stuff in his 90s and 00s work – and some not-so-great stuff, too, to be fair. The contractual shenanigans with Warner Bros badly affected his career momentum and prevented albums like The Gold Experience being the massive hits they should have been. But Diamonds And Pearls and the Love Symbol album in particular were sizeable successes, and there’s decent stuff to be found right across the other albums of that decade. And rather than ‘petering out’, he has produced some of his best work over the last decade or so (Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, Plectrum/Art Official Age and the two recent Hit’n’Run albums are all very fine indeed). I just find it a lazy cliche that ‘he hasn’t done anything since the 80s’; many held a similar view about Bowie after Scary Monsters (until Blackstar), and again it’s just not true.
That may be true. I gave up around 98. However in no way did he dominate the 90s in any commercial or influential sense.
In the UK, Oasis. Worldwide, Mariah.
Mariah sold more records than anyone else in the nineties. Not sure she’ll get an 8-page tribute in The Guardian when she goes up the Stairway to Heaven – oh I forgot she doesn’t do stairs.
Yeah. No one will own up to her influence, but it’s massive. Not good, necessarily, but massive.
I’m sticking with her and Oasis.
Mariah is a great shout.
Billboard voted her number one in the nineties. Janet Jackson was number two.
Billboard only cares about sales
True. Very one else is ignoring Janet. By 1990, she’d already released her best two LPs.
Cor. Mariah didn’t occur to me but now you’ve said it, it’s hard to find a reason to deny it.
In the same way as the 60s is defined as The Beatles and The Stones, the 70s defined by Glam Rock and Punk, and the 80s is synthpop and/or Stock Aitken & Waterman, the 90s will be held as Grunge (primarily Nirvana), and Britpop (mainly Oasis and Blur).
All these “movements” only scatch the surface of what was going on in that 10 year period,
Blur defined the 90s? Good shout, and an argument that has some mileage if the media bods can ever drop the “Britpop is the only thing that happened in the 90s” angle.
Rip Van Wankelengine writes:
Yo! Just woken up after falling asleep on New Year’s Eve 1989 and feel I can state without fear of contradiction that the band of the 90s was The Stone Roses. Haven’t checked yet, but confident I won’t be made to look foolish like my mate NostrilsDammers who forecast Crystal Palace would be the team of the 80s..
One album, however good, which very few people in the grand scheme actually listened to, doesn’t unlock the Owing The Decade achievement.
And I know they had two, but no amount of revisionism makes Second Coming good.
*owning* not owing
I think that was his point.
Oh yeah! *facepalm*
I’m just so used to people claiming the Roses as some kind of globe-humping influence-Jesus that I forgot to read it properly.
Yeah, I read it as a semi-rueful comment on how the Roses blew it. In 1989 they were poised to rule like only a very few before them, but that’s not how it panned out.
It was Del Amitri obviously. Tsh, you people……….
Completely agree. They straddled the decade with a series of nailed on classic albums.
Shows what a lean decade the 90’s were really, if Nirvana are being touted as mastheads.
I’d go for Blur or Massive Attack personally, but really it’s a toss-up between REM and U2.
I forgot about U2, now that was a band……
Going well this thread.
Says something surely that Radiohead and Nirvana can be serious candidates on the strength of two decent albums each. Bjork and Massive Attack produced three – all of which are corkers. In terms of the kind of productivity that Prince and Bowie displayed had only Blur get remotely there with 6 in the decade.
Not sure that anyone will end up Owning The Decade (a good phrase @disappointmentbob which I think gets to the heart of what we have recent been feeling about Bowie and Prince).
I don’t understand why volume of albums should be an issue, other than to pump Prince up the list.
Two great albums (one of them, in Nirvana’s case, amongst the best selling records of all time) is quite sufficient to have a major cultural impact. The Sex Pistols did it with one. Hendrix did it with, what, three?
Blur may have release six decent albums, but their total record sales are less than a fifth of Nirvana – they’re a parochial concern, by comparison.
And – even the undeniable parochiality issue aside – Blur have never released an album that genuinely merits being called “great”. Parklife and Blur are the closest they get, and those records are merely very good. Real greatness ain’t in it.
Nothing after 13 has had any impact at all. Leisure is largely poor; MLIR is much better but still in the grand scheme only of above average quality, TGE is at least 60% woeful, 13 is a hot mess with occasional moments of real beauty.
Blur, sad to say, don’t really matter. Even in “Afterword world”, whatever that is.
Afterword world is just a silly phrase I made up to describe the rather insular conversations that seem to happen on this blog. It’s all just opinions, in the end, although you do seem much stronger in your convictions, than I am.
What’s the point in having opinions if they’re not strong ones, is what I say.
I suppose 90s music is “my” era, so it’s easier to be very opinionated about it!
I generally prefer a bit of nuance in my perspective, but each to their own.
Having given my view, I got the impression you took great joy in trashing it.
Not really. Chill out, would you?
OK.
Nirvana definitely going strong at the beginning of the decade, but Oasis were more prominent for longer and just as influential.
As an albums band they’re two good albums, one so-so – but as a singles band their run of 16 singles from Shakermaker through to Acquiesce is as strong as anyone’s surely. And at their peak their B-sides were better, like Prince’s, than most others a-sides. Half A World Away – a b-side!
New Order were the 80s for me.
Depends on who ask: fans/ critics/ or sales, innit? Using the “what’s in the charity shop CD rack” model of analysis (people ditch the dross, keep the ones they still like), I see a lot of Robbie Williams, Lady Gaga, Hard-Fi’s “Stars of CCTV”, and Oasis. Dire Straits might be an 80s thing, as well. People seem to forget abouyt them, and they were beyond massive for the entire 80s.
Robson & Jerome had one of the top selling albums of the 90s in the UK. Time for a reappraisal?
If we define “owning the decade” as a mixture of record sales and cultural influence, then I haven’t seen any better candidates on this thread than Nirvana and Oasis, and even Oasis are a bit parochial to the UK. Other people might have been more musically influential (Dre?) but never crossed over to that front-page-of-the-paper-when-they-die level, and others might have sold more, but never had the credibility (Mariah).
And as for Radiohead….pffft. A nothing band, who I would argue are already well on their way to irrelevance, unless June’s album turns out to be incredible*. I suppose they did release their best album in the 90s, but even The Bends was very much the product of a post-Nirvana climate, and influenced nothing.
*it won’t
I used to count myself as a Radiohead fan, and still really like some of their work, but they’ve now released far more dross than essential listening. Their main influence (which comes mostly from The Bends) was on all that awful shit like Travis which ended up morphing into 2000-model landfill indie. And The Bends is hugely Nirvana influenced anyway, so.
One could argue the case for The Prodigy especially “Music For The Jilted Generation” and “Fat Of The Land”.
This was a “dance” act who put on stunning live shows,crossed over to fans of other genres (metal,indie) who normally wouldn’t give the time of day to so called “dance” acts and made genuinely thrilling music.
And its possibly down to them that there are so many tattooed,pierced people about so fashion trailblazers as well
Nah. They’ve never released a truly great album. Jilted is about 30% indispensable, 20% good, 10% meh and 40% filler – and it’s by some distance their best record.
At their best, they were superb, but they never hit their best consistently enough to be called anything other than also-rans.
Agree. But a playlist of their 20 greatest tracks rocks my world on a very regular basis. Live, indoors, they’re still untouchable.
Yeah, agree with that. Haven’t seen them live for a long time, but they routinely blew the fackin’ doors off like few others.
Also, while I think you’re wrong about the tats and piercings (grunge’s mainstream enormity did that), I agree partly about their role in breaking down genre barriers. But I might even then argue that they were only continuing what the Beastie Boys started. As Ad-Rock says in “Alive” – “created a monster with these rhymes I write / goatee-metal rap, please say goodnight”. He’s right: they did unwittingly create that monster.
(And you can even trace the Beasties’ genre-fluidity back to the Bad Brains and The Clash, IMO.)
Aha, but The Clash had no top 10 hits, therefore their influence is worthless, and therefore, by extension, so is your opinion…
Yes. You’re right. That’s both true, and a very good summation of my posts on the thread so far.
Sorry Bob – not your fault you missed the Golden Age…
I’ve got era envy.
The Golden Age of Rock and Roll will never die?
In the world of the Afterword, I would say the answer is Blur.
And that’s because I think the Beatles, Bowie and Prince are judged as ‘owning’ their decades* because they changed from album to album, not because they sold loads of records, And, ‘Leisure’ to ‘Think Tank’, I think they did that.
With none of them was it a case of selling something very similar to what came before – there was always musical development. A new image.
In fact, that’s key to it for me – really creative pop artists throw out who they were and what they did before and try something new – a bit of reinvention. I think a lot of people have little time for Damon Albarn, but I like his openness to trying new things, musically. I wouldn’t say that of any of the other 90s artists or groups mentioned in the thread above.
_________________
*Owning the decade is a very ‘Revolution in the Head’/’Man Who Sold the World’ concept, isn’t it? Kind of a balancing act between popularity and ‘influence’ – tilting very much in the direction of influence, of course.
They meant nothing outside the UK, though. And I can’t honestly say that – much as I quite like them – their influence is felt anywhere, is it?
No, but I don’t care about that. This is Afterword world,
We have a winner – Blur is the correct answer
From Baggy also-rans, changing on every album, continually stretching themselves and what their listeners accept, drawing on more diverse influences and styles.
Plus it resulted in some tasty cheese too.
How many other 90s bands can boast musical and dairy based success?
I use the very same argument for Björk.
KIndly to explain the Björk cheese thing?
Bjork and Charles Barkley at the Cheesecake Factory.
Psst… Tiggerlion… that’s not really Bjork
Next, you’ll be telling me The Muppets aren’t real.
Ok, while I can see Nirvana, where really was their influence past about 96, nevermind(!) into the 21st century. Mariah Carey has had far more of a longer influence.
But for me the defining sound of the 90s – for good and bad – is trip hop. And it’s a style that’s still very much present. Lana Del Ray anyone?
So with that in mind, and only based on one album, not even the ones they did later: Portishead.
Yeah that’s what I meant when I suggested Massive Attack. The trip-hop sound/feel has been used just everywhere.
Yeah, saw that, and agreed, but I think the cliche trip hop sound owes it’s existence mostly to Dummy. But yeah, it really was absolutely everywhere.
I always thought Trip Hop first got a showing on Neneh Cherry’s Raw Like Sushi, especially Manchild and again with the I’ve Got You Under My Skin cover on Red Hot & Blue. More of a Booga Bear/Nellee Hooper influence (turned up again on Bjork’s Debut post Dummy)?
I love the Portishead suggestion.
Nirvana influence; obviously they dragged a ton of acts into the mainstream in their immediate wake, but in terms of post-96:
* Britpop was a self conscious reaction to Grunge. No telling if it would all have happened at all without Nirvana, or at least in the same way.
* Cobain had an enormous impact on style of lyrics which continued deep into the 90s and beyond. Paranoid Android, to give but one example.
* Royal Blood had one of the best selling albums of last year. They sound very much like Nirvana.
* A massive ramping up in musical angst.
There are many other examples. It’s almost impossible for a band to come from nowhere and become the biggest band on the planet in the space of two years without having a profound impact, much less one so unusually dark and noisy.
The real question is what might their influence have been and how many records would they have sold had Cobain lived.
I don’t actually disagree, there’s no doubt their impact 91-93 – immediate impact that is – and then the sort of anti impact that happened here with Britpop.
I think on the whole though, and it’s not a 90s thing, it’s a constant through the last 30 odd years – electronics and samples were actually the defining thing.
So after a little thought, the Atari and Akai combination of the 90s was the real Bowie/Prince/Beatles.
It’s obviously Sash. Why is this even a discussion? Cuh.
EcuaDORRR!!
A more serious answer: Shack.
Everybody else on this thread seems to be simply choosing their favourite group, even though they sold fuck-all reckids. So there’s my equally valid suggestion.
Or in our house Darude and Sandstorm. Rules the world of memes and a certain Arsenal forward is always Giroud Sandstorm round here.
Funny, in my head he’s always “chim chim” Giroud.
For me the winners of the 80s were Talking Heads by the measure of critical acclaim combined with commercial success. That’s certainly what I thought while living in the 80s.
Great shout!
I’d say that from the 90s onward things become far more fractured which means there can’t be another David Hepworth 1971, and less contenders to the be a Prince or a Beatles or a Bowie. Dance music has a lot to do with this – and in fact maybe that decade was “owned” by DJs, clubs and obscure dance 12″s as much as it was Radiohead, Bjork or Oasis (don’t forget this was the era when live venues were struggling and Student Unions were booking more DJs than bands for a while). Half way through the 90s the internet arrives and all bets are off…..however I get the impression Bowie and Prince’s premature departure may shaken things up somewhat….
I can’t help but suspect that our views as to who won any particular decade might, not unsurprisingly, be pretty UK/US centric. Even when we focus on worldwide sales this can overlook the fact that in many poorer parts of the world people didn’t buy records.
Anyway, even if he didn’t win the decade, I reckon we forget Bob Marley’s reach in the 1970s.
That’s the only convincing anti-prince argument. Jakko and to a lesser extent Madonna were huge worldwide in places like Africa that Prince meant very little in.
I did some work in Addis Abbaba around six years back. The kids knowledge of western culture was Ronaldo, Messi, Manchester United and Michael Jackson. Lots of local musicians though
Good point, Ernie. And I’d say the same was true of Michael Jackson.
Even in the remotest village in Amazonas or high up in the Andes, the kids would know No woman, no cry or Billie Jean.
I reckon who “wins” depends on which artists have the most loyal fans. The best storytellers, the most dedicated guardians of their legacy.
A major biopic on, for example, Prince, Rick Wakeman or The Clash, could be a major game changer. Lady sings the blues must have a lot to do with why Billie Holiday is still remembered among civilians.
This thread has provided me with more amusement than even Forks’s recent impersonation of a crackhead participating in a drive-by shooting.
Special mention, as usual, for tigger for providing most of the belly laughs.
I aim to please.
I think it says a lot for the brilliance, variety, and strength-in-depth of 90s music that there wasn’t one act setting the agenda. It didn’t seem so at the time but looking back the decade veered wildly at different points it was owned by Nirvana, Primal Scream, Suede, Oasis-Blur, Snoop, Goldie, Roni Size, Fatboy Slim, Wu Tang, Sasha and Digweed, Portishead… it was all going on.
I wholly agree with you, if you remove the words ‘brilliance’ and ‘strength-in-depth’.
1960s – The Beatles (undisputed)
1970s – Elton John (Bowie – no chance. EJ was the biggest star in the world for much of the 70s and accounted for a significant percent of all record sales. Astonishing.)
1980s – Michael Jackson (undisputed by any standard)
1990s – Denim (perhaps an unusual choice but definitively and by any measure – other than sales/popularity – the correct answer)
The unfortunate and embarrassing real answer to 1990s is the Spice Girls for sales and influence.
the 1920s – Louis Armstrong, maybe?