namkcuR said:
If you have to apply a label to this decade thus far, I think it has to be 'hip-hop'. I mean, even non hip-hop artists are trying to infuse the hip-hop vibe into their music. Look at Gwen Stefani. With No Doubt, it was all about melodic punky rock music. But in her solo career, the hip-hop influences are incredibly blatent.
Outside of hip-hop, nothing comes to mind. The majority of the great rock albums released this decade are from bands that came from previous decades. Radiohead and Pearl Jam came from the 90s. Audioslave is a combination of the remnants of two bands that came from the 90s(Sound Garden and RATM). Red Hot Chili Peppers came from the 80s and 90s. U2 and REM came from the 80s.
The only rock band I can think of that came from this decade so far that I think will be remembered and talked about in twenty years is Coldplay. In the 60s you had the Beatles/Stones/Beach Boys/Doors. In the 70s you had Zeppelin/Floyd/The Who/Clash/Sex Pistols. In the 80s you had U2/Metallica/REM/Bon Jovi. In the 90s you had Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Alice In Chains/Soundgarden/Radiohead/Smashing Pumpkins/RATM/RHCP. What do we have this decade so far in terms of rock bands that will be remembered like that in twenty years? I honestly can't think of one outside of Coldplay.
That's not really fair. The upper crust of the early 90's was really reminiscent of the late 60's early 70's, there was almost a sea change in the mainstream, whereas the early 00's are more comparable to the early 1980's, where maybe there wasn't a sea change all over mainstream music, but there was an underbelly of great music that will get it's due eventually, and could conceivably last just as long.
If you understand what I'm saying, then you can look no further than U2, among others. They weren't large in the mainstream until the latter half of the decade. From 1980-1985 (more or less) thei popularity was not all that different from groups like Arcade Fire or whomever. We don't know where those groups will go.
Pearl Jam and Nirvana had equal peers at the time, believe me.
It's just Pearl Jam has used it's longevity of quality to become legendary, they weren't on the same pedestal in 1996 as they are now. Nirvana, while probably legendary is helped by the mythologies surrounding Cobain's early demise.
But there were bands in league with them that have either dissolved or dimished in stature, in other words, it's too early to start naming the real impact of this decade. Much like the early 80's, I don't think we'll see it for a few years, whereas the early 90's was immediate, it was as I said earlier a sea change, rock and roll changed, pop music changed, country changed, metal changed, hip hop chnaged, rap changed, and it wasn't all to do with Nirvana as the revisionists like to write, it had to do with a bevy of things, the whole of the artists that the labels were signing were better because the public started buying better music, because it was so crap for so long. Technology helped as well.
I'd expect the next decade 2011-2015, or so to be pretty incredible, that is if you accept that history repeats itself in popular music.