> some eras can have better music than others too, period
I agree with your point within genres but I disagree with your point as a whole. The main issue is knowing where to look, which can actually be quite difficult for some periods, as a lot didn't make it onto Youtube or Spotify. I've done some digging, though, and within each decade since the dawn of electrically amplified recording (1925), I've personally managed to find a style of music that I consider "as good as anything in any other period" i.e. timeless.
The thing is, some of these styles have been forgotten in contemporary discourse: Western Swing went from THE most popular style of music in the 1940s to being completely forgotten or tossed under the rug along with "I hate country and rap." If you ignore Western Swing because it's "country", you ignore the most interesting musical movement of that whole period (and you fail to fully understand the origins of Rock & Roll/Rockabilly/Sun Records/Elvis).
Other styles/movements have been reduced to the work of one or two idiosyncratic artists who are revered/remembered more for their personal story than for their place in the broader context: Django Reinhardt is the first that comes to mind (listen to Eddie Lang & Joe Venuti[0], then Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies[1], then come back to Django[2] and see what you think). Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are two others where most people are more familiar with their personal stories than their contextual relevance (and I'd argue one is a lot more important than the other).
I'm willing to list off my personal findings/recommendations on styles/artists but it would take me a while to get from 1925 to today. If there's interest I'll write it up but this post is already getting long.
First post has a lot of good recommendations from the 20s that I stand by. I'd rewrite most of the second post, though. I'll just do an overview here of what I'm familiar with:
30s -- swing/big band, western swing, acoustic/country/delta blues
40s -- western swing (cont), electric blues, honky-tonk, bop, vocal groups (less familiar)
I agree with your point within genres but I disagree with your point as a whole. The main issue is knowing where to look, which can actually be quite difficult for some periods, as a lot didn't make it onto Youtube or Spotify. I've done some digging, though, and within each decade since the dawn of electrically amplified recording (1925), I've personally managed to find a style of music that I consider "as good as anything in any other period" i.e. timeless.
The thing is, some of these styles have been forgotten in contemporary discourse: Western Swing went from THE most popular style of music in the 1940s to being completely forgotten or tossed under the rug along with "I hate country and rap." If you ignore Western Swing because it's "country", you ignore the most interesting musical movement of that whole period (and you fail to fully understand the origins of Rock & Roll/Rockabilly/Sun Records/Elvis).
Other styles/movements have been reduced to the work of one or two idiosyncratic artists who are revered/remembered more for their personal story than for their place in the broader context: Django Reinhardt is the first that comes to mind (listen to Eddie Lang & Joe Venuti[0], then Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies[1], then come back to Django[2] and see what you think). Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are two others where most people are more familiar with their personal stories than their contextual relevance (and I'd argue one is a lot more important than the other).
I'm willing to list off my personal findings/recommendations on styles/artists but it would take me a while to get from 1925 to today. If there's interest I'll write it up but this post is already getting long.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgzAoDhzUJA
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnjE5aB-cWQ
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTH_Nn_TtDI