That's the problem with most decades, I think. What we are exposed to as passive listeners is the stuff that is declared fashionable. That's not always what many of us would consider best or most interesting but it's what we mostly hear unless we actively go hunting for new stuff.

Finding new music is easy now thanks to the net but in past decades opportunities were sometimes limited by whether one lived somewhere with a fresh music scene or whether one was aware of people like (in UK) John Peel, Andy Kershaw etc who would play stuff that was very far from fashionable and which didn't have a snowball in hell's chance of getting mainstream airtime.

The good music has always been there, but the salesmen have often been pushing other things.