Feel free to disagree, but the 1780's had some rocking operas, and Mozart was at his creative best!

(sorry - couldn't help myself)

Since I'm into rock I think the 70's was the best!

I will go with the 20th century.. well that’s a few decades ?

My favorite is the 70’s.

So far, the 70's.

Progressive rock like Pink Floyd, Queen & Grand Funk Railroad
Funk with Parliament-Funkadelic & Kool & the Gang
Punk Rock with Bowie, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Misfits, & the Talking Heads

I'm personally more partial to the 80's with the beginnings of rap & hip-hop but I think the quality of multiple music genres from the 70's has not been topped.

70’s
Great bands and music from hard rock and creation of heavy metal genre

1971-1985 Prog Rock to New Wave. It all turns to crap in the mid 80s with the arena bands like Bon Jovi and commercialised Aerosmith. The 'big pop ballads' i.e. Michael Bolton were pretty awful along with the highly over-rated Bryan Adams.Can/t think of anything good til we get to Nirvana!

As an avid fan of Prog Rock, definitely the 70's ... Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Genesis, Rush, Focus, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Supertramp, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Kansas, Yes, Camel, Triumvirat, Styx, Starcastle, Alan Parsons Project, etc.

1960’s

The 1870s - oh, you meant popular music?

It's impossible for me to answer that because I love all kids of music from back in the Baroque period to music today.

I have always enjoyed 1960s blues, jazz, and rock. Early 70s is good but a little more commercial.

90's by a long shot.... Grunge was at its prime.. We had Nirvana open the door for so many great artists....SoundGarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, Garbage, Sponge.. WeezerSo many..

Pretty good rule of thumb for any decade after the 70's: The mainstream sucks. If you want to find the good music that's being put out, smash your radio with a sledge hammer and start searching the internet as well as apps like Pandora, Spotify and Deezer.

Forties and fifties. The Miles Davis and Charley Parker years.

What if I said 1890? Most of the time when I see a question like this, opinions only go back about 20 years. Like if someone asks about "best" movies, you generally won't find answers that are, say, silent films or from the era before color, let alone something earlier than from the 70s. Maybe a better way to phrase this is "What is your favorite decade for music" as there is no real way to measure "better". As, is JS Bach "better" than Charlie Parker?

I've got very diverse tastes in music and listen to a wide variety of different music depending on my mood. I feel as though the 90s may be my preferred era, it was a time which owes a huge amount to the earlier periods and this goes for all genres...

Well, I loves me some classical and baroque, but if we're talking modern, I'll have to say the 80s. Sure it's synthy and slick, but it came out of a cultural perfect storm of shitty conservative leadership in the US and UK, in the height of the Cold War, when technology was really starting to boom, the space programmes were flying high, and people were trying their damnedest to be optimistic while the anger from the 60s and 70s boiled under it all.

I think the construct of decade is very arbitrary. So can we break it into 10 year periods? I think for popular music and bands 1975-1985 was amazing. For classical, you have to dig down a lot deeper than that. And for blues? You might need two decades. It's like asking about any other form of art that changed over the years.

1700-1709

1971 was the very best year ever
[loudersound.com]

Music is such a subjective thing that I think it's pointless to say that music in the 19XXs is better than any other.

I'm partial to music from the early 2000s because that's what i grew up on. I like music from most decades, but it sounds better as technology progresses. To each their own.

Anything before 1990! ?

very partial to the 90's, but then I loved the 90's anyway, chicken or egg there.