...this morning I listened to some Howard Jones tracks on Lastfm and was amazed by how brilliant they were. A lot of 80s pop has aged very well.

Rick Astley, 'Agadoo', Stars on 45, Spandau Ballet, Bananarama, 'John Wayne Is Big Leggy' and, of course, The Close Lobsters and The Flatmates. Yeah...let's hear it for the eighties.

so now it's the SAW re-evaluation? I get it. Ten years pass and we forget what cynical, unchallenging, illiterate, Thatcher-loving tossers they were.

I'll always remember though.

And it had Morrissey in it.

As a teenager of the 80s I've often felt the decade was unfairly mocked, maligned and muttered about unkindly in musical terms. Sure, there was a lot of tosh about, but hasn't there always been? Yes, it did produce SAW (btw, Rick Astley was a bloody good singer!), Jive Bunny, Stars on 45, etc., but nobody seems to denounce the 70s in the same way, for instance, by bringing up the dreadful proliferation of Euro-pop about at the time (Baccara, Pussycat, etc.)or the 60s by mentioning The Archies, Freddie & The Dreamers, etc.

Everything seems to co-exists alongside everything else far more than people give it credit for. After all, what was the big selling album at the height of the 60s? "The Sound Of Music."
I will say that for conspicuous consumption the last ten years have been far more like the 80s than the 80s ever were. And for drug consumption they leave the high noon of psychededelia standing.

You've put it far more articulately than I did, Mr H, but that was part of my point - it's just that 80s music always seems to get a less fair press in terms of its influence and quality and has become a 'joke' decade, which brings forth the mention of shoulder pads, leg warmers, yuppies, etc., etc.

I think the decade seemed to be smothered with a horrible, inescapable tacky veneer of rubbish music that unfortunately tarnishes the memory of the whole thing. And I'm not an enemy of pure pop - I would defend Wham for instance (oh yes).
Underneath the veneer was some great stuff of course. I especially like the bands that used punk energy to explore other genres and do it in their own charismatic way; e.g. folk (Pogues), ska (Specials (just), Madness, 2 Tone), soul (Dexys), blues (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds), etc.
Still easy to hate the Eighties though, and I'm of the generation that should be defending it.

...in which Prefab Sprout would have got on TOTP. Pop was a broader church back then & the better for it.

the majority of chart pop has always been pants. I've enjoyed all of the series until last night. As a teenager of the 80's and a mature(er) pop fan in the 90's, I've come to the conclusion that it was the 90's that sucked as it really offered little new of lasting effect. Britpop and Grunge were both utterly awful. What else was there? Give me post-punk anyday. Can you imagine Japan's "Ghosts" in the top 5 today?

In many ways, it was the 80's that fulfilled the promise of the late '70's as a lot of the bands informed by punk got into their stride and began to really deliver. I'm thinking the Postcard bands, The Smiths, Kitchenware, New Order, Dexys etc.

At the same time the 'electro-ish' bands were coming good - Human league, Heaven 17, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys.

And there was tons of 'good' pop around as well - Prince, Madonna, Frankie, even dare I say it Wham!, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. Not wholly to my taste, but of it's type, as good as it gets. I would suggest that it was music of this quality that allowed Smash Hits to thrive and prosper in a way I don't think it could based around today's scene which is so much more about 'celebrity' rather than the joy of a catchy hook and a strong melody (as well as cheekbones you could cut ham with).

The '90's and the '00s pale badly in comparison.

were such a barren spell for good music that for about 3 years my favourite band was Marillion.

someone will say 'don't diss the 'llion'.

eddie unhook from the politics for a mo. Speaking as someone peripherally involved in "ver struggles" of the eighties, I know its difficult, but if you can decouple, the music is good. As David H pointed out any period has dross; one of the best sellers of the sixties was The Bachelors. In my opinion, judgement can only be made by considering the best products of a period. I mean even the musical response to La Belle Dame sans Merci from people like Elvis Costello and The Specials, were better than ANYTHING since. Could a group like Dexys ever come out of the 90s?

The 80's was a game of two halves. After an unparalleled burst of creativity post-punk, things started going tits up in 1985. Rock aristocracy regrouped at Wembley and took back the album charts, black music got druggy and angry and didn't want to dance no more, the digital studio sound came in with its inorganic sheen, horrible drums and (the horror) sampling, bands started making videos instead of records thanks to MTV, CD started to kill the single, and Kylie, Jason, Sonia & Rick polluted the charts.
If the decade had been the other way around we would be lauding it like no other.

seriously can't 'unhook' music from politics. And even in those times when you can, you know you really shouldn't.

I'm a big fan; a vastly underrated band who have either been pigeonholed as a 'Scottish heavy metal band' or 'Genesis clones' when both are wide of the mark, really. They were never heavy metal, Fish was the only Scottish member and really, it was only his slightly Gabriel-esque vocals and the fairly horrid 'Grendel' (that the band admit these days was basically their version of 'Supper's Ready') that linked them to Genesis.

They don't sound like that anymore, in any case- Fish left some 20 years ago. Saw them at my university last month and got a DVD called 'Somewhere In London' and they really are a stunning live act. Their albums 'Afraid Of Sunlight' and 'Marbles' are not heavy metal and they don't sound like Genesis; I find them hard to pigeonhole though I genuinely think Pink Floyd/Radiohead/Talk Talk fans would find much to enjoy about them.

There was good and bad music in the 80s and 90s, as with any other decade. I think it's the hyped genres- grunge, Britpop- that produced fairly little of lasting value. I personally find it hard to find any impact grunge in particular has on rock music as of now and I tended to agree with Stuart Maconie's summary of it; that Nirvana were basically the best of a pretty poor lot.

Britpop (especially Oasis) brought in a nostalgia that I'm not sure British rock music ever quite recovered from; turn on any old rock festival coverage on the TV or Later With Jools Holland and you'll see many guitar rock bands with a very conservative, traditionalist sound. I've nothing against retro rock, believe me, but I don't see why it should be hailed as any great breakthrough.