If your emphasis if popular music (by which I seek to include all of rock music, "indie," "experimental rock," rap/hip hop, metal, country music, etc.) then you'll probably be disappointed by any era of music you're in, especially now in the digital age of immediate digestion of a wide array of materials. Even great years for rock music like 1977 only had maybe a few dozen albums that had a big lasting impact, but in '77, that was just fine, since you had to, you know, pay for it, and then there was the ritualistic and community sense around it. All that sort of thing faded as popular music became more and more splintered and physical media died (this isn't me basking in sentimentality - just making an objective statement).
The best thing I can recommend to people who dislike contemporary music isn't to explore the genres they like from the past that are being done well now (though this sometimes yields favorable results - Liars were a big highlight of my sophomore year of high school). What I would recommend to most is to seek those new genres and styles that can't be found in other decades - without a broader, unfortunately canonized context to compare most things to, personal exploration is freed up and the process becomes a lot more fun again.
For example, EAI/Onkyo, some new strains of jazz (though very few) and a lot of drone/ambient/free [genre] things are at the peak of their powers right this second. And there's always (post-)modern classical!
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