Honestly I agree that 2002 has more in common with 1996, I think social media was a big game changer. Like in 2002 digital cameras were still relatively novel among the common folk. But I really got into this flexible decade thing as I could find an application that I hadn't thought about before. Behold, my thesis: in music the long 50s is 1947-1962.

It makes sense to start the long 50's before the year 1950 as this includes the first LP records (1948), first black music marketed as rhythm and blues (1948) and the earliest rock'n'roll recordings and bebop recordings. These three genres are quintessentially 50's to me. The music industry had seen large changes following the 1942-44 recording strike with the decline of big bands and the increased prominence of vocalists so giving a couple of years time as a transitional period makes sense to me - either 1947 or 1948 would make sense to me as the musicianship was catching up with technological and cultural changes. I'll choose 1947 as it lines up with the beginning of the cold war - actually let's use the beginning of the world as the dividing mark.

A good endline could be 1962 or 1963 for three reasons. Firstly the British invasion had started then, lessening the US dominance. Secondly jazz lost its mainstream popularity around then and hard bop was no longer as current with increasing experimentalism of the short 60s in jazz to follow. Thirdly and most subjectively, some of the pop music recorded during the 60s but before 1962 really sounds like 50s to me. And laugh or not, to me from the sound engineering side, Big Girls Don't Cry (1963) by Four Seasons sounds more modern than earlier recordings due to how crisp it sounds in comparison. The same sound engineered also worked on Michael Jackson's Thriller, also notable for a similar reason. Besides, Be My Baby by The Ronettes was recorded in 1963 and that sounds quintessentially 60's to me so it seems to me that the endline can not be stretched further.

Lastly for me some of the quintessential 50's things are the US dominance in world affairs, cultural exports and so on, the nuclear age and the cold war. The cold war started in 1947 and escalated to a high point in late 1962 in the form of the Cuban missile crisis. I find it cool when you line up music history with world history and even if the opportunity to do so is just a coincidence, it's a welcome one.