What albums did you listen to today?...continued

Echo & The Bunnymen - "Heaven Up Here": Nice atmospheric post-punk vibe, and it's aged pretty well...arguably moreso than the rest of their first four releases.

Jolin Tsai - "Play": Pop stuff, but every once in a blue moon I just want to hear a woman sing in mandarin, and Jolin is one of my very few go-to's for that.

Anderson/Stolt - "Invention of Knowledge": Listening to this, I realize that we love with our hearts as we seek for the truth and the understanding.

The Residents - Not Available

Amon Duul II - Tanz Der Lemminge

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Area - Crac!

Even when I listen to entirely different albums from entirely different genres, it always comes down to the 1970's...  As a millennial, this is mystifying. Was the decade really that great or is it somehow just the one I'm familiar with the most?

I find myself thinking the same thing a lot. Personally I don't think the 70's was a more enlightened or creative time, musically. I think it has more to do with the production aesthetics of the day compared to now. Loudness war and digital effects and all, it kind of sucks the life out of a lot of otherwise great music. On a related note, I tend to prefer modern albums that were recorded on analog tape. 

I'm not sure production can honestly make such a substantial difference that 70's seem so superior not just to the modern day but in comparison to virtually every decade. As someone with hearing loss, I actually struggle with some 70's groups that have weaker, quieter production and yet still find something worthwhile in them that's lacking in perfectly recorded modern music. But then, I don't think music necessarily is worse either, there's just so much more of it and artists have to record so much more for an album that they can never live up to the consistency of a 40 minute album from the 70's. 

Most likely, it was just a perfection storm of rock, jazz, and experimentation. Rock really started hitting its stride around 1967, so it just had a couple more years to go before unleashing an absolute onslaught of great material for a full decade. Jazz was best in the 60's, but picked up lots of new tricks and ideas going into the 70's, and was interacting much more with rock. And of course, both genres were fully ready and capable then of properly experimenting. 

The years of my ten favorite albums are as follows (approximate):

1979

1975

1993

1972

1981

1971

1980

1982

1976

1969

Most of those are from different genres entirely, so it's not just a bias for prog specifically. There's some spark from the late 60's through the early 80's that I simply can't explain, and it can't be production techniques alone. But then I've listened to much more music from the 70's than any other decade...