Certain decades can said to have been dominated by certain instruments - often new and innovative ones which allowed musicians to demonstrate some kind of 'progression'.

For example, you could say that the /50s 60s/70s were influenced by the electric guitar. That stuck around until the 80s when the keyboard synthesizer gave the world a glimpse of something new. Many artists were quick to take use this instrument as it created sounds so radically different to what had come before and what's more, it had won the hearts of listeners.

Since then bands have for the most part, followed their predecessors. You get a couple of albums of music heavily influenced by the traditional 'set up' fronted by the electric guitar and then when it's time to demonstrate they're progressing, they simply visit the 1980s and start utilizing synthesizers/ electronic instrumentation.

Is this where we're stuck now? I love synthesizers and electronic music and I probably always will but it's quite worrying that for at least a decade or more, most mainstream artists haven't been able to introduce us to anything really new or innovative and simply relive the musical ventures of their forebears made 30 years ago.

Or am I being (as I suspect) very unfair?